


Mine When We're Together

by Lauren_StDavid



Series: Beechwood [6]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Doorstep Baby, Explicit Sexual Content, Flirting with person other than partner, Light Angst, Light BDSM, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Racism, Recreational Drug Use, co-sleeping in a Monkee pile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:11:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 81,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauren_StDavid/pseuds/Lauren_StDavid
Summary: The unexpected arrival of a baby at the pad turns life in Beechwood even more upside-down than usual—and along with it, Mike and Peter's relationship...Huge thanks to the Sunshine Factory website https://monkees.coolcherrycream.com/ for all the fantastic info and pictures! I couldn't have written any of these fics without that lovely treasure trove to mine.And many thanks to 70mtt for all her help and encouragement!
Relationships: Mike Nesmith/Peter Tork
Series: Beechwood [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1206016
Comments: 182
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter One

Mike rolled his shoulders, hoping to shrug off the guilt that was doing its best to lie across them like a yoke. Guilt…or betrayal? He wasn’t sure, but he did know he’d been feeling like a variation on Judas since earlier that August morning, _very_ early that morning when Peter had risen from their bed and given him a tiny kiss. Tiny, because Peter was going out to hit the waves at hell-knew-what o’clock, and so bestowed an _I don’t want to wake you but don’t want to leave you without a kiss_ touch of his lips to Mike’s.

Yes, Peter had kissed Mike, who’d then made sure he rounded up the others and sneaked out before Peter came back; hence the Judas feeling settling over him like a cloak. He wished he had an actual cloak—it would cover up the stupid clothes he was wearing. Yeah, he was attempting to swing his mind to other topics and away from how much he hated even half-deceiving Peter, particularly as he and Peter had just two days ago spent the entire day getting stoned and screwing each other’s brains out, celebrating their monthiversary.

He hadn’t said anything to Micky when they’d gotten ready and driven off, but now they’d parked and were making for their destination, he grabbed the back of Micky’s fur vest to slow him down and spin him back to face Mike. “Hey.” Mike spoke softly and jerked his chin to indicate Toby, just ahead. “You still up for this? You know you can change your mind any time.”

“You must be joking!” Micky’s Davy impression was good, for a change. And his voice carried—Toby looked around. Mike raised a warning eyebrow, and Micky nodded. “I’ve been itching to do this ever since I knew about it!” Micky assured him. “Okay, so I have done it before, but I didn’t know, so that doesn’t count right? And I wish you’d tell me what it was I did do.”

 _Hardly._ Way the jumping bean was carrying on now, at just the anticipation? Squashing down the thought that Micky was much more Maxwell Smart than he was James Bond, Mike just hoped hard he’d be as discreet as he’d sworn he would be. He tried even harder not to recall that what Micky had sworn on was a leaflet for the new Santa Monica Baptist Church, in lieu of the Bible their pad didn’t possess. It was the intention that counted, right? Davy, walking on ahead, Mike could trust to keep his mouth shut. About anything and everything.

“Well, let’s get this first part over with.” Mike pulled his own and very itchy furry vest straight and tried not to stumble in his ridiculously fringed bell-bottomed pants as he headed away from the Rose Avenue parking lot. He nudged Micky to hurry along the sidewalk and catch up with the others so they could head into the ballroom at the top of the street, just before the pier. No, the _club_ , it was, these days, although the long, low building retained the look and feel of its recent and grander ballroom days.

Toby was leaning against one of the club’s slim white pillars that propped up the overhang bit of the entrance…and gave drunken clubgoers a pole to twirl around when they came out into the Venice air after a concert. “Mike! I said we should get into our duos already, just in case!” she was shouting across to a guy waiting near another pole, who was looking a little startled and ignoring her.

“I’m here. _This_ is me, and not that complete stranger,” Mike told her.

“Oh. Easy mistake to make,” Toby shouted across to the random stranger, pointing at his clothes, her tone accusatory.

“Wait. Where’s Davy?” Mike couldn’t see him. They couldn’t be one man down already, surely? Not when they needed all four of them for this?

“Here. I was looking at the posters on the far wall.” Davy looked amused as he joined them again. “It’s wild—half of the flyers give this place’s address as One, Navy Street, Venice, and the other half as One, Navy Street, Santa Monica! What’s that all about?”

“Because we’re right on the border between the two! It’s a mystical spot.” Micky pointed out at the pier behind them. “It’s what makes it so fantastic here!” He looked about to launch into another of his rhapsodies about the place, so Mike nudged him again. Harder this time.

“We should get inside, get started,” he instructed his group, motioning them into a line and eyeing them.

“Why do I think it’s inspection time?” Davy muttered.

“Davy, adjust your wig—your bangs are tangling in your false eyelashes,” Mike began.

Davy dabbed a paper tissue at his kohl-rimmed eyes and pushed the long straight black bangs of his long straight black wig free of his long black curled eyelashes. “I’m only doing this ’cause I get to stay in trousers this time,” he observed, sticking out a leg to shake his homemade fringed flares, a match for Mike’s.

“We’re like those spot the difference puzzles!” Toby exclaimed, as if she’d only just noticed. Noticed that her wig was the same as Davy’s and that her striped slacks, flared from the knees, complemented Micky’s drainpipe-skinny striped pants, for instance. Mike, debating whether or not to part Toby’s long black ‘hair’ into two bunches for her to wear trailing down her front, supposed he should count himself lucky that he, like Micky, didn’t have a wig. They both had their own hair, blow-dried as long and straight as possible, although Micky’d had to iron his too, to get the same effect.

“I can see differences, like we got the shammy leather.” Davy indicated his and Mike’s vaguely leathery, suede-looking tops, darker than Micky’s and Toby’s very bright orange long-sleeved tees under their furry vests. Toby had also insisted on her usual rubber go-aheads, unlike the customized boots Micky had insisted on making for himself by sticking strips of fur around his stage footwear.

“We look…” Words failing him, Mike shook his head and ushered the four of them inside the club, wishing he wasn’t and wishing they weren’t, all four of them…entering the Cheetah Club and Pacific Ocean Park’s Sonny and Cher lookalike competition. Not for the first time, he wondered if the occasion wasn’t some joke, or revenge. And if he found out it was…

At least the first part should be easy—if he ignored the music blaring out and people singing along with it—just registering and getting their photos taken. Oh and ignoring the eye rolls and sniggers of the other competitors, it seemed. Huh, they’d had training from Clarisse, an actual model, on how to stand and give their best to the camera, so that pair next to them had no need to give him and Davy a pitying head shake.

“I think we stand a good chance!” Toby declared, stepping down from the podium after she and Micky had posed for their photo, and looking around at the other couples. Then she frowned. “Does anyone else think the other duos all look the wrong way round, somehow?”

“No, it’s us that are!” Mike’s heart sank as he checked out twosome after twosome, seeing all the garishly dressed female figures with ass-length black hair…were taller than the gaudy-looking male ones with chin-length dark brown locks. He pointed at the carboard cut-outs along the edge of the dance floor and the huge blown up photo on the wall behind the podium…all of which showed the chick towering over the guy.

“Oh for God’s sake—didn’t _any_ of you know Sonny is shorter than Cher?” he demanded. “Toby, you work for those crappy pop magazines—you must have seen pictures of them!”

“The camera makes people look different. It’s a technical thing.” Toby pointed at the photographer on the stage with his cameras, as if that clarified anything. “It adds weight, makes you looks fatter and flatter—”

“And taller or shorter?” Mike inquired, his lips set in a grim line.

“Hey, why are you so bent outta shape over this?” she asked. “Why’s this contest making you ape?”

“Well, heh…” Mike sought for an answer. Toby was right to ask—this wasn’t their scene and certainly not his.

“We got an ulterior motive, Tobes.”

Micky’s answer froze Mike where he stood.

“We do?” she frowned.

“Sure we do! We get through this first bit, we get given a free pass to POP, of course!” Micky grabbed her hands. “Yeah, okay, so it’s to get shots of the contestants for a fan club magazine photo spread or a backdrop for some lame TV show, but we get a couple hours in the theme park, for free!”

“ _If_ you pass,” sniffed a guy standing next to them, perhaps the guy Toby had spoken to outside, although it was hard to tell, way everyone was dressed. But pass they did – well, Mike thought all the pairs of lookalikes did – and, the waltz time and busy instrumentation of the oboe-heavy song that had been playing nonstop still worming in his ears, they were escorted in a chattering, giggling mass out of the club, along the street and around the corner, where they walked past the International Promenade of buildings at the front of the park…to the entrance to POP.

“Oh, _man_!” Micky revolved slowly, taking in the fountains, sculptures and large seahorse frieze of Neptune’s Courtyard just inside the entrance, and stretched his arms wide under the huge six-legged starfish canopy set above the ticket booth. He took a deep sniff, as if trying to inhale the essence of the twenty-eight-acre nautical fun land. “I spent so much time here as a kid. Coco and I used to sneak off and—”

“Take the bus down to the end of Wilshire and spend all day in here,” chorused Mike and Davy.

Mike had been to POP before. He hadn’t understood what Micky had meant by Pee Oh Pee at first, making the classic out-of-towner assumption that the Pacific Ocean Park’s acronym was pronounced _pop_ , as in soda. As soon as he’d started living in Santa Monica, Micky had rhapsodized about the green and white marine-themed amusement park on the next pier down from theirs that he’d gone to as often as he could growing up.

And when he discovered that none of the other three had ever visited the place, he’d been first incredulous and then horrified, and insisted on taking them there. Mike…didn’t want to know how he’d somehow found the almost two bucks-apiece entrance fee they’d needed to get it. But they’d spent the day there and enjoyed it, he supposed, one of their first group activities, their first bonding experiences.

“It even smells different here, right?” Micky asked them.

“Yeah, more creosote than fried food, like our pier,” Davy replied, shoving Micky along one of the beige-pink stone walkways over the pools of water with their spouting fountains.

Part of the similarly dressed herd, they headed for the first port of call, the submarine elevator. That had awed Mike the first time, and at least he was prepared _this_ time for the plunge to the depths…of the huge shark tank, complete with shark. As if on cue, most of the chicks gasped and cried out, meaning the guys had to put their arms around them, as awkward as it was with them being shorter than the ladies. Micky wouldn’t have had any trouble comforting Toby, if she hadn’t known the place since she was a kid and wasn’t now knocking on the glass wall of the elevator to bring the shark, who she called Fang, closer.

“It’s okay, Davy,” she told him, kindly, hugging him and pressing his face into her shoulder when he paled a little, at her actions rather than the shark, Mike thought. And if two pint-sized Chers hugging drew more gasps than the shark, well, tough, he decided.

When they emerged again, the organizers wanted shots of them all ranged around the viewing glass of the Neptune’s Kingdom attraction, looking down into the depths they’d just been submerged in. A red-and-white-striped-blazer-wearing security guard shoved Mike in the small of the back to get him into position, almost making him fall, and Mike turned around to yell at the idiot…only for his voice to seize in his throat.

The guard stared at him with a blank face, but Mike recognized him. He would have said he knew him, but he only knew the big, burly guy with receding hair by his professional alias of Smith, just as his partner—yep; there was the smaller, slightly less-meaner-looking darker-haired goon—went by Jones. Mike gave a slight upward nod of his head at the two officers he’d met while asking for the CIS’s help a month back, the two operatives…who were running this CIS mission that Mike and the three people with him were a part of.

It might have been easier if he felt less guilty, he reflected. Oh, he wasn’t sneaking out on Peter completely—Peter knew they were executing an operation for the Central Intelligence Services. Maybe he even knew it was to make up for him having blindsided them, agreeing to undertake a mission for them in exchange for their help, and then kind of double-crossing them by feeding them false information, fake intel, and no real surveillance material. _So this is_ his _fault_ , thought Mike, a little mutinously.

“Hey.” Micky sidled next to him, despite the photographer calling for Sonny-Cher-Sonny-Cher all around the glass panes of the viewing windows. He spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Look, if you didn’t agree to do this, they might not offer you another, as a way of—”

“Dodging the draft,” Mike finished for Micky. He gave a tiny nod. The other three were safe. Just him to go.

“And Peter agreed, in principle,” Micky continued.

As long as everyone involved, like Micky and Davy, agreed. Which was why they were keeping the exact nature of the assignment and Toby’s role in it from Peter…because they were keeping Toby’s participation in it a secret from her. “So many things she does are a mystery to her anyway,” Micky had said. “One more won’t make _any_ difference.”

“I know.” Mike risked a peep at Smith and Jones, who stood as impassive and as bored-looking as if they were actual park operatives who’d been tasked with accompanying a PR exercise instead of picking up litter, say, and considered both things equal. Mike knew something else, too: that their destination, the setting for their intervention, was the next stop on their itinerary.

He gave a soft kick to Mike’s ankle. “You ready?”

Micky’s attention had been captured by the clown who wandered about the place parping a hooter and announcing the names of the park’s attractions in one long string of syllables without needing to pause for breath, waving his arms about to indicate where these attractions were to be found. He snapped up straight. “I was born ready!” he assured Mike.

Mike had to smile at the gag. “But are you ready now?” he inquired. “I sure hope so, ’cause you’re up next, kid.”


	2. Chapter Two

“Oh, I’m up. Or, actually, down…well, soon will be,” Micky informed Mike, casting a glance at the Nautilus Submarine Exhibit. “Up for anything and down with anything. Lay it on me and bring it on and—”

“And you’re a little clanked. It’s only natural.” Mike slowed, resting against the railing that stopped visitors falling into the pool at the bottom of the long, high waterfall wall. He took a deep breath of the water, inhaling its real-ocean-salt and treated-water-chlorine scent, a smell that was as blue, somehow as the marine-colored wall, the side of the exhibit. He hoped Micky would copy him, and find the water cascading down the wall, especially the section pouring from giant clamshells to smaller and smaller ones before splashing into the pool, calming.

“I’ve done okay so far,” Micky protested. “The way I took point on this, set up our covers for status, and aliases that you entered us in the competition under?”

“Yes, ‘Ben’,” said ‘Adam’ or Mike. He signalled to ‘Hoss’—Davy, under protest—not to get too far ahead with ‘Little Jo’. Actually, that name suited Toby. “And I’m just happy you didn’t go with Cartwright for the surname.”

“Yeah, well, Schneider’s a much better fake name.” Micky looked fine again now, out in his habitat.

“Hey, we’ll maybe have time after to go on the rides here created by the Hollywood set designers your mom and dad used to know.” Yeah, Mike wasn’t above bribery. “The details really make this park something special, huh?”

“Oh, yeah! And coming to see them, when the place opened, to support the guys, got me hooked on the place. You know, this place kinda brought me up?” Micky pointed around, like the clown had done, and Mike wondered how much of a role model it had been. “The Flight to Mars ride—that made me into such a bug on sci fi, Mike! And the House of Tomorrow, all those electronic appliances and gadgets? Seeing that, I got on a kick after inventing.”

“I see.” As stressful as the situation was, with all that was riding on it, Mike found this charming. Sweet, even.

“But yeah, I’m a little—”

“Nervous?” asked ‘Hoss’, or Davy, joining them.

“Yeah!” Micky stood wide-eyed at Davy’s comment. “How d’you know?”

“You’re babbling,” Davy and Mike said together. “Like a bloody brook,” Davy added.

“Oh, hey, you know, when I was a kid, this place seemed so grown up! I couldn’t wait to get into high school and come here in the evening to that cool shack in the midway over there, where groups used to play, or where they’d play records, and teenagers would hang out and dance.” Micky’s smile was wistful.

“Sounds real groovy, Mick,” Mike said.

“Sounds a good place to meet chicks,” Davy said.

“And was an easy way to find out how much a guy was into you.” Toby’s comment made them jump. “If they wanted to bring you here, to such a cheap place to take a date…”

“Or an easy way to find out which guys didn’t got much moolah,” Micky capped, glaring.

“Ex _actly_.” Toby gave him a pat. “Oh, I’m remembering this lamest of the lame battle of the bands they had here a few summers ago! You know, all surf bands, and there was this one rock and roll group, really lousy, with the velour suits and greased-up hair and…” She trailed off, in response to a series of fast, furious and complicated gestures from a shame-faced Micky.

“Anyway…” Mike had no idea what was going on or what he was going to say next. He had to grin at the confused expression of the traveling artist with his portable easel on seeing so many similar-looking park visitors.

“Caricature?” the artist asked weakly.

“No need, mate. We got one.” Davy jerked his thumb at Micky.

“Wait, I just realized, I’m like Peter!” Toby pointed at the three of them and then herself.

“ _I wish_ ,” Mike muttered.

“You should have brought him. Why didn’t you?” she continued.

“Well, you’re an honorary Monkee girl,” Mike tried.

“And like I said, ulterior motive.” Micky had seemingly gotten over his annoyance with her. “Take your mind off stuff.”

“Take _her_ mind off _…_ ” Davy was sniggering too much to go on.

“What stuff?” Toby asked as they started walking, having no choice, being the last of the mass of competitors.

“Eddie.”

“ _Eddie?_ ” Toby’s echo was blank.

“Eddie, the guy you were hung up on? The married man with the kid?” Micky mimed rocking a baby, although the kid Mike had seen at the sandcastle competition had been far from baby-size.

“Oh, he was the wrong guy.” Toby waved a dismissive hand.

“Attagirl! See? POP works its magic!”

“No, really the wrong one. It was a different Eddie. There was—”

“A mix-up?” they all chorused before Toby could. “But yeah, like we said, don’t mention it to Pete,” Micky added. “He might be sad.”

“Aww. That’s too bad. I won’t breathe a word,” she was saying as they approached the entrance.

“She won’t mention it—she’ll forget,” Mike stated.

“You sure?” asked Davy.

“You’ve met her, right?” Mike hung back, letting the others enter the submarine attraction first.

“Not her. Not that. I mean this.” Davy indicated the long metal-shell exhibit, gleaming with technical equipment and made crowded by the multiple Sonny and Chers darting about, their exclamations bouncing off the low ceiling, as were the shouts of the two female guides calling out to amorphous groups what things were, what they did…

Mike understood Davy’s question. “Honeywell is,” he muttered. “The CIS is.” This was an official Central Intelligence Services’ operation, not one of Honeywell’s rogue, undercover schemes designed to expose dangerous techniques and weapons the domestic intelligence agency tested out on an unknowing and helpless public. That sort of affair Mike—and the others—had been involved in before. This…not so much. But in this as the others, the Monkees were still coerced sources. Davy still looked sceptical—what could be seen of him under his wig and eyelashes—making Mike sigh.

“He told us what they learned from signal intelligence and electronic intelligence—”

“Y’mean what they overheard via bugging.”

“Yeah. The hostiles said a friendly would be dropping off a ‘present’ from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory today using this lookalike competition as cover.”

“Hiding in plain sight a bit of a thing with them, then?”

Mike nodded. It was clever. Doubly so, because along with a crowd all looking the same, what could be a better place to hide stolen technology than in the one-hundred-and-fifty-foot model of the atomic reactor section of a submarine?

“I know as much as you do,” he assured Davy, covering his hand with his mouth as he spoke, mindful of the omnipresent Smith and Jones, stolid in their striped blazers and, really? Straw boaters? Mike kinda wished he could take a photo. The tough agents must be hating looking like old-timey barkers.

“Just seems like one of those crappy TV series Mick laps up, and that Peter watches and claims are existential when he’s stoned off his nut.”

“Well…” Mike had no comeback to that. All the CIS had discovered was that there was a traitor working at the nearby Santa Susana Field Laboratory, forty miles from downtown LA. A traitor or spy who was happy to turn over secrets to the enemy, but whether the turncoat worked in the liquid-propellant rocket engines section, the nuclear reactors department or the U.S. government-sponsored liquid metals research lab, was unknown. The secret services would know, though, once they saw whatever it was had been left in the drop-off point, and then false secrets, fake info and subtly altered tech could be placed in that section of the Laboratory, with the idea being to see where there this went, how far, and how. Shaking the tree.

“But…” Davy’s glance at all the ‘equipment’ and ‘technology’ on display, somewhere among which the stolen secrets would be left, said it all.

Mike pretended to be pointing out a row of dials to Davy. “Micky will know what’s real, what’s, oh, I don’t know, too advanced, too secret.” He watched Micky, Toby in tow, examine each item, from the generator to the condenser, and hoped what he was saying was true, that Micky could deliver, if not as a result of his knowledge of science then due to…his other talents and abilities. Mike thought the latter would give Micky the edge over any government scientist charged with the task. Not that the CIS had been able to scramble one on less than twenty-four-hour’s notice; hence Micky.

“And what’ll happen when the ‘hostile’ can’t find the package he came to pick up?” Davy asked.

“No, the CIS’ll leave a fake version, soon as they see what this one is,” Mike reminded Davy.

“I just gotta swipe it. The whatever, right?” They both jumped at Micky’s hissed question behind them.

“Yeah and be discreet,” Mike hissed back.

Davy scoffed. “To quote you, you’ve met him, yeah?”

“None of that. No negative vibes, okay?” Mike wiped his brow and tried not to feel claustrophobic in the overgrown tin can, one in which voices bounced around, echoey and high, and in which it was easy to believe he was under the ocean. “Positive vibrations only.” 

“Aww.” Davy smiled, his face softening. “You’re missing Peter.”

He was, and wanted him there, by his side, preferably hand in hand with him, but was glad he wasn’t. He nudged Davy to keep moving, keep pretending to admire the displays, keep pretending to listen to the guides. It could only have been a few minutes at most, but seemed hours, Mike hyperaware, hypervigilant, his eye on the group as a whole.

“Mike, I’ve just thought…what if this lab worker doesn’t—”

“He is. In fact, I’d bet he has,” Mike answered him. “Count the Sonnys. There’s an odd number.”

“Guys. let’s split. Now.” Micky was there, pale, and his chest looking fatter or padded—whatever he’d picked up and hidden in the pocket sewn inside his shirt was bulky.

“Mike,” Davy whispered, pulling him down as they pushed their immediate way outside, Toby sympathizing with Micky feeling ill. “There isn’t an odd number of Sonnys. There’s an even.”

“But—”

“Huh. Look. There are two more Sonnys than Chers,” Toby observed, pointing.

“ _Two_ more?” Mike scanned the exhibit and entrance for the CIS guys, Smith and Jones…and didn’t see them. _Two more…as in one to drop the stolen tech off and—_

“Excuse me.” The words might have been polite, but the Sonny who cornered Micky in the entranceway looked anything but. He looked dead-eyed and ruthless. “You have something of mine.”

 _And one to pick up._ Shit! Mike stepped closer to Micky. He still couldn’t see Smith and Jones. Surely this agent hadn’t—

“I don’t understand. Excuse us,” said Micky, just as politely, and firmly, the _us_ being him and Mike, if his hip shove at Davy, to push him back inside the exhibit, and the flash of his eyes toward Toby saying _take care of her_ was any indication. Davy nodded.

“Last chance.” The man’s tone was almost conversational, but the movement of his hand toward his shoulder, where a holster would be, was business-like.

“Hey, stop hassling us, man! We’re just here for the contest—what the hell’s your bag?” Micky half-yelled.

His volume and maybe his belligerence surprised the agent. Momentarily confused, he paused, which gave Mike time to hiss at Davy, “Stick with the group,” before he flicked a glance at Micky, a glance that said _run_ a half-second before he and Micky bolted.

“This way!” Micky jumped down the step to freedom, racing along the outside of the submarine, Mike close behind, catching him at the top of the exhibit, cutting through the landscaping and pushing through a service door in the wall that fenced that attraction off from the next one. The Sea Circus, he discovered, with the event about to start and spectators making their way to the banked rows of benches looking down on the tent that was the arena.

Micky pressed close to the outside of the huge, tall tent, letting the crowd file past him and Mike. “And _no one_ thought the pick-up would be on the same day as the drop-off?” he demanded.

Mike shrugged, still scanning the ground they’d covered and hoping the guy, not knowing the short-cut, had decided to cut his losses. ‘“Intelligence is not an art or a science, but a craft?’” he quoted. Then he spotted something, or rather, someone, that had his heart sinking. Their pursuer. “And we’re gonna have to be very crafty, Mick.” He thought fast. “We better split up. Give the package to me and—”

“No.” Micky’s reply was firm and heavy. Weighty.

He picked now for an attack of stubbornness? Now, when the agent after them was right on their tail, his face set and determined? “Micky—”

“We’ve been in worse spots. And this is a nice spot! Come on!”

Micky grabbed his sleeve to get Mike into lockstep with him as they raced off deeper into the heart of the park, doubling back on the route they’d taken so far, but around and along the side of different attractions. Micky cast a regretful glace at the Sea Pool. “Love that!” he panted. “You can throw balls, hold out hoops…”

“Later,” Mike promised, hoping it was true.

“In here.” Darting around a family with two stroller chairs, Micky pushed at a loose piece of a brown-painted fence. “This was easier when I was a skinny little kid,” he observed, wriggling in the gap he’d made.

“You still are a skinny kid. Just taller.” Mike forced his way in after him, and extracted himself from the middle of a bush his momentum landed him in. “We’re in a forest?”

“The Fun Forest…” Micky laughed as Mike ducked when there was no need to: the sleek silver train going around a track above his head wasn’t as low as he’d thought. He stopped at the hubbub outside, just beyond the fence, where they’d come in. “Come on. Straight across here…”

Which included shimmying around a ride composed of several small helicopters attached by metal beams to a central hub, and having to vault over and slide under each vehicle in turn as it ascended and descended, Micky whooping wildly as he did so.

“The hell— Crazy damnfool teenagers with your dares! Get out of here!” yelled the operator, advancing on them.

“We’re trying!” Mike yelled back, pushing through shrubs and plants again, on the opposite side of the forest this time. This side, in his opinion was no more Fun than the other.

“Where’s the rendezvous?” Micky asked on a gasp, spitting out a mouthful of prickly green.

“Beyond the midway.” Mike tried not to think that the central avenue, the spine of the park, sounded a bit like _Mayday_. At least that was what he felt like yelling, especially when the first thing he and Micky heard, after scrabbling up the fence and hoisting themselves over to drop to the other side, was a loud, hard-voiced shout just behind them.

It froze them where they stood, just outside the Sea Serpent Roller Coaster, and although Mike knew they shouldn’t, he turned, to see the hard-faced agent…outlandish mod clothes and neck-length wig discarded and now wearing the official POP striped blazer, and bearing the weight of authority with him.

“Stop those long-hairs!” he shouted, gesticulating at Mike and Micky…and any have-a-go-heroes in their vicinity. “They’re pickpockets!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the plot kicks in soon.


	3. Chapter Three

Micky’s yelled answer of “Are not!” came at the same time as Mike’s, “Well, _you’re_ a spy!”

They gazed at each other, wincing at their pathetic answers. Would “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” have been less stupid? Less wrong? But it was _all_ wrong there, in the midway of an amusement park, the wide avenue flanked by kiosks and rides, its air ringing with the _ding-ding-ding_ of bells and the resulting groans or cheers, and scented with the sickly-synthetic-strawberry aroma that flavored everything from cotton candy to ice cream to donuts.

And it grew even more wrong when the happy buzz of children’s voices and exclamations all around them switched in a second to confused questions and pointing fingers, and their random, excited dashes from place to place, attraction to attraction, were curtailed by their mothers grabbing them and pulling them close. The mothers’ indulgent or placating tones turned shrill, rife with condemnation, demanding people _do_ something…about Mike and Micky.

“ _Move!_ ” Mike nudged Micky into motion.

Silence hovered for a second before people around them took up the man’s repeated words, adding words like _hippies_ and _freaks_ to them, anger and disgust lacing their tones. The agent, seen behind the circle of people now advancing on them, twitched his jacket wide open, showing the dark leather and bright metal of the holster and gun he wore.

“He wouldn’t shoot, not with so many people about? Kids?” Micky sounded scandalized. “And, wait—he’s got a weapon? _Fuck!_ This way!”

There was so much Mike wanted to say, to promise, to reassure, to apologize, but he saved his breath for running as they raced along the wide avenue, dodging pursuers, evading grabbing hands and tearing past booths and rides to— “A shooting gallery?” he panted, nevertheless following Micky inside. “You thinking we can get armed here?”

“No, I’m thinking we can get through here.” Micky whisked aside a STAFF ONLY curtain closing off one corner, to show Mike the plywood door behind it.

“You did spend a lot of time here!” And Mike was glad for every minute, now.

“Few nights too,” Micky told him, drawing the curtain and closing the fire exit door behind them as they hurried through.

“Where are—” Mike jumped at the wavering, distorted version of himself in front of him. “The fuck? Oh, what? You’re _kidding_ me!”

But Micky, the elongated-to-impossible-proportions Micky, shook his head, looking beyond freaky.

“Hall of Mirrors. Had to be, way our luck’s gone on this.”

“Mirror _Maze_ ,” Micky corrected Mike’s grim pronouncement. “It’s a bit old-hat now, so not much foot traffic in the day. More in the evening.”

“Huh?” Mike didn’t see why, until Micky mimed smoking, and letting a small cube dissolve on his tongue and staring around him, saucer-eyed. “Oh. Gotcha. Yeah, far out.”

“Outta sight. Especially with the lights and sounds.” Micky took a step and a glass reflected his body bent like a circus contortionist. “Oh, wish I could really do that.”

“Yeah? Well I wish we weren’t here.” Here, in this big room, like they were trapped in an infinity of their reflections and reflections of their reflections. “Stay together and keep quiet,” he begged Micky.

A noise from outside had him whipping around to see, stupidly as he couldn’t see through walls. He turned back and cursed to find Micky gone and himself alone—well, as alone as he could be in the midst of a line of Mikes stretching into the distance, growing smaller and thinner and paler as they went. He groped out and saw a dozen arms rise in a line, where the row of mirrors reflected. A flash of movement caught his eye. “Micky?” he hissed, then jumped back as a small kid ran past him, stumbling and crying for his mommy as he tried to find the exit.

Oh, it was creepy, passing by tiny squat and huge fat Mikes, holding his breath and expecting a hand on his shoulder at any moment. A few paces later the space he was in turned, so he turned with it, to find himself inside a sphere, mirrored all around, but not like the floor-length looking glass in a changing room.

This was all mirrors within mirrors, a kaleidoscope, under flashing lights, showing him everywhere as the moving circular floor beneath his feet span him in a helpless circle and the mirrors tilted and righted, came forward and receded. He was close and far, everywhere and nowhere and— Red and white stripes! Spinning and throwing out an arm only made him hit cold glass. But the guy was there and raising his gun and—

A hand grabbed him and pulled him through a gap between two sheets of glass. Micky! Figuring out the controls on the wall! Mike could have kissed him, and Micky’s raised eyebrow said he knew. Knew and— “No time!” Mike whispered in his ear. “The guy, he’s right there.” And trying to counterturn himself to resist the revolving floor, attempting to figure out which bits were real wall and which were reflections. Wouldn’t take him long.

And even less time if he shot the glass out, as him bringing up his gun suggested he was preparing to.

“I got this,” Micky whispered to Mike, pressing a button. The mirrors started to press in on the space. No, narrow in, Mike saw, or actually, triangle in—was that a verb? It was what was happening, the mirrors angling in to make the circle become sharp at the top with a wider base, while weird lights pulsed and throbbed.

“No!” Mike hadn’t meant to speak above a whisper, draw attention to their position, but Micky stepping into the small space with the foreign spy alarmed him, and Micky, quick and lithe, easily evaded Mike’s attempt to grab him. To stop him.

“Go get back-up, or reinforcements. At the RV spot,” Micky threw over his shoulder. “The exit’s that way, there.”

And Mike reached the door before he realized how stupid that was. Why had he agreed? Leaving Micky to face the enemy like that? He must be wigging out. The door opened as he was dropping his hand from it, making him stumble back. A slim guy stood there, his gun drawn. He was taller than Mike, with a high forehead, and dressed in the nondescript suit and hat that screamed alphabet agency of some kind. His face was pulled into stern lines, but his eyes wanted to twinkle. Mike knew him. They all did, having worked with him before. It didn’t stop Mike raising his hands though, obeying the law of the gun.

“Agent Modell?” he whispered.

Modell gave a sharp nod and spoke into his radio, gesturing with his gun for Mike to put his hands down. Mike thought fast. Modell had owed them—was he now running this, expecting to meet them at the RV, the steps going down to where motorboats were moored off the Fisherman’s Cove part of the pier? Or had Honeywell sent him? This was his op—where was he? Mike had no clue, but whatever, he was grateful.

“Where’re the operatives?” Modell snapped.

“Smith and Jones? They split, man, back when we were in the submarine!”

Modell drew himself up at something behind Mike and Mike tensed too, spinning…to see Micky. Micky, who was leading the spy, the spy’s gun in Micky’s hand. Not pointed at his prisoner, to coerce him. There was no need, the way the once tough, hard guy walked meekly at Micky’s side, staring straight ahead.

“It’s Micky. Don’t—”

Modell’s nod said he knew what was what. Which was more than Mike did, the way Micky looked: pale and weak and wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

“This him? The hostile?”

Mike nodded. “He was dressed like we were to make the pick-up, then got himself up as a park worker.”

Modell pocketed the gun Micky held. “You seen a ghost?”

Modell’s question wasn’t for them but their captive, who stared glassily in front of him, muttering something neither Mike nor Modell caught.

“He wants to become a contractor,” Micky explained.

A source placed under contract by the intelligence organization? Woah. That’d be a feather in someone’s cap.

“I-I don’t understand.” Modell looked from Mike to Micky. “If this is who I think it is, there’s been no indication he’d turn, would ever—”

“I want to become a contractor,” the guy repeated a little louder over Modell.

Modell fired off a string of questions at his prisoner, but Mike didn’t care. “You okay?” he asked, getting close to Micky so Micky, shaky and clammy, could lean on him without looking feeble.

“Nothing a chick in a teeny-tiny bikini won’t cure. We get one about now, right?” Micky replied, with an attempt at a grin.

“Everybody down!” was yelled from the doorway before two men, still in their borrowed striped uniform blazers, crashed in, issuing more redundant orders, as Modell let them know.

“Mike?” Micky made a grab for him.

Mike strode up to the older, meaner agent, his fist clenched, and got in one good punch before Micky pulled him back. “Where were you, you assholes?” He glowered, incandescent with rage, at the two men, who looked from person to person and eyed each other. “What happened? When you saw it was compromised, you decided to burn us?”

“Cut us loose?” Micky gasped.

The two CIS men looked shifty.

“Why?” Mike thundered. “Revenge? Incompetence? Or you’re just so useless that while we were doing your jobs, you were off getting ice cream?”

“Selling it, more like, dressed like that,” Micky observed.

Modell laughed, as did another guy, about his age, who came in and who Modell nodded to.

“Gonna let you go,” Micky said to Mike.

“Like you could hold me,” Mike scorned, but thought, Micky probably could, if not by physical force then—

Then it was all confusion and bustle, questions snapped out, answers barked back…and the solid rectangle of metal with circuits in it retrieved from inside Micky’s shirt and handed over. Mike, adrenaline ebbing, was about to ask after Davy and Toby, until Modell answered a crackle of the walkie-talkie his deputy passed him.

“Kids?” He cut through the tumult. “You gotta go.”

“What, like, debrief by a foxy chick? Or to put the squeeze on ol’ Charlie there?” Micky cracked his knuckles.

“No. Singing.” Modell smiled.

“Oh. I don’t know that term?”

Neither did Mike, but he was too cool to say so outright. “Meaning…?”

“You’re numbers fifteen and sixteen, right? You got through to the next round, judging the contest’s best vocal performances.” Modell’s smile was a face-splitting grin.

“You’re joking!”

“If I were joking, my bowtie would be spinning,” Modell told Micky.

“You…aren’t wearing one.” Micky pointed.

“So what does that tell you?”

“That we got a ballroom to get to? C’mon, Mike!”

“Hey.” Modell’s voice stopped them. “Thanks. Again. This won’t go unsung.”

Mike shrugged. If this wiped the slate clean, he’d be happy, despite still being confused as to where Honeywell was. He got in a final glare and menacing step, toward Jones this time, as they exited…into a normal afternoon, where visitors, mostly kids, ran about, the ocean lapped the pier, the Santa Monica buildings loomed yonder and the mountains behind them.

“Fun in the Dark.” Mike read the name of the attraction next to them. A haunted house? He was so very glad Micky hadn’t chosen that venue for the showdown. He took deep breaths and Micky did the same, looking around just as incredulously.

“That’s it? We pulled off—we did that and now…”

 _Everything looks the same_. Mike understood. “I guess the blonde in the two-piece didn’t get the memo, babe.” Micky looked deflated, and Mike didn’t like that. “Oh, one more thing.” He indicated the marine-blue and white golf buggy idling near the building, then shoved Mick into the driver’s seat and got in beside him. “We’re commandeering this and I’m giving you permission, no, an order to—”

“Drive like a hot-rodder on amphetamines whose tailpipe’s on fire?”

“Even more so than ya normally do, yep.”

Mike had barely got the words out before Micky took off, throwing him back in his seat. And if he would rather have been facing off against another enemy agent than hurtling through a crowded amusement park in a stolen buggy with its driver making siren noises and endangering anyone in his path, he just gritted his teeth.

“I can’t believe we have to do this,” he griped as they threw themselves onto the stage of the club and joined a frantically waving Davy and Toby among the ranks of the lookalikes.

“At least my Cher’s a chick.” Micky was smug.

“At least mine can sing.” Mike was smugger.

It was as hellish as it could be, singing along to the duo’s hit record, then without it when the music cut out, with Davy demanding details and Toby being fobbed off with a story… Oh, and the winners were the real Sonny and Cher who’d allegedly entered the contest incognito, unannounced, to be crowned the victors by the impartial judges of Cher’s mother and Sonny’s stylist…

“Keep an eye on Micky,” Mike ordered Davy, his ears still ringing from the cries of, “ _Cheats!_ ” and, “ _Fix!_ ” the ballroom had rung with. Mike hadn’t known scores of people dressed in fuzzy fur vests and huge plastic jewelery could get so goddamn noisy.

“What? Not staying for the concert? Stars from the record label plus the alleged real Sonny and Cher?” Davy asked. “Could get talking to the management…”

“No. You’ll have to charm any industry execs, l’il biscuit. I’m taking Toby home for her date.”

And Mike was glad to do so, even managing smiles in the appropriate places when she prattled on about the ‘creditor’ he and Micky had run from, and the evening matinee she was going to with Eddie. The real Eddie, not the fake. Mike was sick of fakes and imposters.

“It won’t matter, that we’re swapping partners tonight, will it?” Toby’s question, coming as she stood close to Mike for him to undo her oversized necklace, jolted him. He dropped his hands from her skin.

“That I was Micky’s Cher and now it’s Davy, who was yours?” she clarified.

“Oh, that. No. No one will notice the switch,” Mike assured her.

Toby giggled. “My twin brother and I used to do that. No one ever noticed.”

Mike wished the image of Davy expecting to find Toby in her bed and instead finding her twin brother and…not noticing was _not_ playing in his head as he used the guest shower. He shuddered. He changed back into his own clothes, that he’d left there earlier. It sure felt like a long time ago.

He waved Toby off in her convertible and took the Monkeemobile back to 1334. Whose turn was it to cook? Mike hoped not his and hoped Peter was in. He longed to see him. To cuddle up with him.

His mind full of what they could do, having the pad to themselves even for a few hours, he hopped out and threw open the garage door, then pulled the Pontiac in and…braked just in time to avoid running over the woven basket left there.

No, not a woven basket, a Moses basket. Or basinet. Mike never remembered the difference. Whatever, it was on a base and had a baby in it. He knew that because it started to bawl as soon as he slammed the car door closed.

“Oh for God’s sake! That’s all I need!” Mike gritted out. “Peter! Get out here!”


	4. Chapter Four

“ _Peter!_ ” Mike shouted again, at the door, the basket he now carried by its handles jiggling as he wiggled the key in the lock. At least the motion quieted the baby again. “D’you forget something, when…”

But no Peter came to meet him, still less a Peter clapping his hand to his head while his face flushed at having rushed into the pad to set down the tune or lyrics that’d come to him while he walked little Henry…making him forget Henry in his haste. The pad looked empty, but Mike shouted Peter’s name again, in case he was in their bedroom. Mike got more irritated as he stalked around, checking the bedrooms, the bathroom and the sundeck for Peter. He even peered down onto the sands, all in vain.

Damn. He was thinking selfishly, he knew, but the plans he’d made for a few hours alone in the pad with Peter, the perfect antidote to the humiliating and, yeah, _dangerous_ crap he’d been through today stoked his irritation. So Peter hadn’t just forgotten the Purdeys’ grandson outside for a few minutes—he’d forgotten he’d agreed to watch him for the evening?

The Purdeys’ daughter, Henry’s mother, Shelley, was unconcerned—okay; selfish—enough to have knocked the door, gotten no reply, and left her son outside, secure in the expectation Peter would either be finished in the shower or the john or making his way downstairs or in from the deck any second.

Because for all Micky’s jokes about Peter being a space case, that had been in the early days of them living here in the pad. With them having responsibilities, commitments, timetables, Peter had grown less absent-minded, and better about following through what he’d agreed to do. And this was despite the way he’d chafed at that ‘heavy stuff’ at first, making Mike surmise, in retrospect, that his apparent balloon-headedness had been bratiness.

So where was he? There was nothing on the calendar about him being elsewhere, or doing something, and nothing about watching the baby, either. Mike set the basket down and swore. Probably Shelley and Peter had a more casual arrangement than they all did with Mrs. Purdey, who asked nicely in advance, often via a pretty little notelet or card she delivered in person along with baked or roast goods, and the same again when she thanked them after—emergencies notwithstanding.

Yeah, Peter would have told Shelley to let him know with just a phone call…and he’d forgotten she’d called and arranged it. “This is why I tell you all to write stuff down!” Mike raged at the empty pad, tapping the calendar. Or, maybe Shelley hadn’t even called, Peter having assured her he’d be happy to sit little Henry anytime. He liked the kid and didn’t mind giving up his free time to watch him or any neighbor’s kids. He liked having a baby around. Mike knew that.

“Well, I’m not that much of a sucker,” Mike declared. He took up the basket and set out to walk along Beechwood to the Purdeys. They could take care of their own family. Peter was Mike’s, for their evening alone together…as soon as Peter came back from the store, or Nyles’, or wherever. He’d have to get his baby fix another day and—

“Answer the door, goddamnit!” No one answering the bell, Mike thumped a fist on the wood. Henry made a cawing noise, like a seabird, almost, startling Mike into almost dropping the bassinet. He stalked to thump on the windows, and saw no one through them. Was it worth going around to the back? He took a few steps back to peer up at the upper floor windows, and detected no movement inside the bedrooms.

Oh, he was good and ticked now, his steps hard and jerky as he strode back to the pad. Henry would need feeding and changing and entertaining soon…and Peter hadn’t returned in Mike’s absence. He wouldn’t have gone surfing again? Mike checked for his stuff, around the side of the house. It was there. And dry…too dry, and…where Peter had left it yesterday, surely? Mike was staring hard at it, trying to recall, and the ringing of the phone inside the den took a second to register.

“Peter?” he almost yelled into the receiver, having dived to answer and snatched up the phone.

“And here’s me convinced you were Mike,” came Micky’s voice.

“What… Oh, right.” Mike jogged the basket a little, hoping the snuffling and creaking noises didn’t translate into Henry wanting out. Micky had obeyed Mike’s command to check in. And on time too. “You doing okay, erm, _Ben_?”

“Guess so. No, yeah, I am.” Micky raised his voice over the music and hubbub. “It just seems so, like, flat, after that, right? And almost like I imagined it?”

“I know. But the important thing is just to get back to normal, to forget it, if you can.” And not go chasing that rush in real life, whether through alcohol or drugs or provoking situations and—

“Yeah. I understand. I do, Mike!” Micky insisted. “Hey, why d’you think I was Pete?”

“He ain’t here.”

“Oh, the session probably overran.”

Micky’s clipped shutdown of his sentence told Mike more than words could have. “Session? He’s playing for some group?”

“Yeah.” Micky exhaled. “It’s no big deal, Mike.”

“It’s not his turn, to earn money.” They had a system—

“He jumps the schedule all the time.” _And you let him._

“But he didn’t mention it…to me.” That part of it hit him then. “So who for?”

“Oh, a recording. New Star Studios.”

“I asked who, not where.”

“That old friend of his—” The metallic beeps of the payphone cut Micky off. “No more change and I really am fine!” he managed to add, his voice tinny and distorted, but still dripping in relief.

Mike replaced the receiver on the handset with slow care, rather than slam it down. He drank a glass of water at the sink, and when that didn’t calm him any, not tamp down his frustration, he slammed the plastic beaker onto the counter, gathered up Henry, and was at the Monkeemobile, strapping the basket into the back all in one swift movement.

New Star was on Santa Monica Boulevard. “All right, all right!” Mike called into the back seat when Henry wailed most of the way along the freeway. “We’ll be there soon, and then maybe Peter won’t double book himself or skip out on obligation when his old friends come a’callin.”

That seemed to placate Henry – he was burbling as they headed up Crenshaw, and kind of singing along Wilshire. Mike would have joined in, but his head was buzzing. Why hadn’t Peter mentioned that his friends had… No. Wait. Micky’d said old friend. Singular. And the Four Winds, the folk group he’d known in the Village and who he did session stuff for were very much plural. And they weren’t his only friends from the Village.

 _Maria._ Mike stopped himself from accelerating up Vine. He’d never met her and didn’t really know the story there because that was something else Peter was quiet about. Micky had mentioned her more than Peter had. What Mike did know was that the record her group had cut last year had sold well, and so if she was making another, here in LA, she’d obviously get Peter in on it. Why did Peter have to keep so much to himself? Mike resolutely ignored any other reason he was irritated—and it _was_ irritation, and _not_ guilt—or that he might be projecting. Seeing Amanda’s jeep, which they borrowed when she was away, as she was this week in San Francisco, in the parking lot of the small New Star Building got him madder.

Striding in, basket in hand, the baby’s limbs waving over its edges, Mike stopped at reception. Ah. This studio had a reputation for being more relaxed, looser than most, but he didn’t exactly know—

“Studio Two, right?” The receptionist rolled his eyes at him. “Go right on in. It’s open house—in the wait area. Keep the noise down, okay?”

“Sure.” Mike nodded.

“One more for the circus,” the reception commented to a co-worker as Mike set off, barely lowering his voice.

“The freak show,” came the even fainter reply, in his wake.

The wait area, when Mike found it, was all painted walls and psychedelic posters, furnished with low, squashy beanbags and footstools, and held a few people, mostly chicks. Mike set the bassinet down under a low table covered in dubious magazines, glad to relinquish it. Henry wasn’t a newborn and was stocky. Least he was quiet again, not disturbing the music being made on the live side of the barrier of potted plants, small statues and a screen. The group’s sound was tight, folk-rock, and Mike detected a heavy country influence.

Everyone there eyed him, the women openly. Muses, Mike realized. For Maria whateverhernamewas, a folkie? Oh, she played with two guys, he recalled. One her husband…

“So I gotta stay away from the blond?” a small redhead asked another girl.

“Blond _s_. Uh-huh. For tonight at least.” The girl blew a bubble with her gum, then swore when it stuck to a lock of the streaked bangs bouncing around her face. “Because I feel like getting it on on the double, dig? Double blond.”

The redhead moved closer to the screen. “Yeah, he’s cute. Hey, he could be twins with your guy.”

 _Peter!_ Mike’s pulse pounded and his eyes narrowed as he looked where the woman was gazing. _The hell?_ He stepped between her and the object of her gaze. Double? Twins? He’d just about had enough of that topic today. Something nagged at him and caught him. _Old friend from the Village who looked like Peter…_ The next second, a male voice reverbed over the live area, the music stopped and a guy jumped out of the control room in the corner.

He took the resonator guitar from a dark-haired guy, explaining and demonstrating something, his southern drawl long and low and his confidence high. Mike knew the rugged blond hippie with his heavy-lidded blue eyes highlighted by his wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat and overlaid by his measured arrogance. _Old friend from the Village who looked like Peter_ …was Stephen.

“So, yeah, break, y’all,” he shouted, and strode from the live to the wait area, stopping on seeing Mike there. His sleepy-seeming eyes opened a little. “Woah. You psychic, _cher_?”

“Huh?” Mike replied.

“I was just thinking the lap steel guitar ain’t cutting it on this track and we need pedal steel. You play it, right?”

“Yeah, but no…I didn’t know—”

“Goddammit!” Stephen turned and frowned at the loud tinny noise cutting through the whoops and calls. “No fucking around on the tack piano—I got it detuned just right!”

“Didn’t know any of this,” Mike admitted. “That you’re…”

“Producing this buncha deadbeats? Well, yeah, that’s what military school does for ya. Teaches you the discipline others lack.”

Peter came around the low screen, cigarette in his mouth and his eyes widening to see Michael.

Before he could speak, Stephen slipped the joint from Peter’s lips and took a huge toke. “Hey, baby!” he greeted the streaked-haired muse, grabbing her in a hard embrace. He blew the rest of his smoke into her mouth as he kissed her. When they broke apart, she stretched to whisper in his ear, and he chuckled, the sound raw.

“Pete? Bliss here got an interesting idea. Fancies herself some double fun back at the homestead…a little blond on blonde on blond…” He waggled his eyebrows.

Peter shook his head. “No, thanks.”

Stephen stared at him. “You sure, pardner?”

Peter stared back, his only movement to hold Stephen’s wrist to take another hit from the joint Stephen held between his fingers. What Stephen saw in Peter’s eyes had him moving his hand to cup Bliss’ face. “Bliss, hun, go grab us some beers before those bums drink ’em all, huh?”

She nodded and skimmed his hat from his head to wear it herself, and Stephen slapped her ass in retaliation as she went, making her squeal.

“I told you I’m with Michael,” Peter said, moving to stand next to him.

“Yeah, you did. And—”

“And you don’t get it.” Peter told his friend. “There wasn’t time for me to explain properly. I’m _with_ Michael. We’re MichaelandPeter.”

Mike tensed, for several reasons. Stephen drew in a visible breath.

“Well, hell!” he yelled, delighted, his ice-blue eyes open wide now as he looked at them. “C’m ’ere!” He grabbed Peter in a huge hug, rocking him from foot to foot like a mountain man dancing, then turned to Mike when he let Peter loose, holding his arms wide again. “Bring it on home, man!”

When Mike stood still, still a little confused and unwilling to submit to any kind of embrace, Stephen grabbed his hand to shake it. His grip was firm and strong. Mike believed him about the military school education.

“It’s abaaat daaam taaahm,” Stephen declared, his drawl filling the room, or so it felt. He offered the joint to Mike, who shook his head.

“Michael?” Peter pulled at him to get his attention.

“He’s not here to play,” Stephen said, demonstrating some form of shared understanding, a telepathy of friendship, with Peter.

“With…?” Mike jerked his chin toward the others, curious despite himself. He’d met Stephen properly once, when he’d called around for Peter last summer. He almost wanted to smile, recalling how Micky had opened the door to Stephen…

“Lost your key again?” he’d asked, his attention on the TV.

“Ain’t never had one,” Stephen had replied, causing Micky to do a huge double-take.

“Looks like Peter, sounds like Mike!” he’d yelped, equating a Texas twang with a New Orleans by way of Louisiana southern accent before rushing off to hide in the No-Room.

In the limited interaction Mike had had with him that evening and the next day after Stephen had stayed the night, the guy had seemed the kindred-spirit Village musician and head Peter had described, yet with a core of hard, focused steel. Seemed military school, like the armed services, taught compartmentalization along with discipline.

“Oh, we got it together enough to go on at the Troubadour, and some suit in the audience liked what he heard. I convinced him to advance us enough to cut a few tracks…” Stephen pointed at the control booth. “Can’t blow this chance.”

“So you’ve been at it all day?” Reason Peter’d lit out so early.

Stephen chuckled. “And yesterday. And all last night. Might call it for today now though.” He stuck the joint in the returned Bliss’ mouth this time and clinked the beer she passed him against hers. “Help yourself,” he invited Mike, gesturing with his bottle to make his meaning clear. “Record company’s paying.” 

“I’m not here for a drink.” Mike was trying, really he was, to deal with the automatic negative feelings that sprang up in him, coloring his view, his judgment, in situations like this.

“What are you here for?” Stephen’s tone held curiosity, not challenge or hostility. He’d welcomed Mike, asked him to play. Peter had told him he and Mike were an item and he’d seemed genuinely pleased for them. Mike held on to that, and forced his anger and suspicion from him, like air from a balloon. He ducked to slide the Moses basket out from under the table and handed it to a surprised-looking Peter.

“I need Peter. He agreed to babysit for our neighbor.” Yeah, it sounded lame, like a nagging wife. And the contrast between their narrow, local lives and the sprawling, freewheeling one being led here hit hard. “I can see how he lost track of time.” Did that sound…at least neutral?

“Michael?” Peter looked up from his in-depth inspection of the bassinet’s contents. “Firstly, I didn’t agree to babysit. And secondly, and more importantly, this isn’t Henry.”

“What? Of course—”

“It’s really not. It can’t be. It’s a girl,” Peter finished.


	5. Chapter Five

Mike could _really_ have done without the cold wave of humiliation that washed over him at that and which drenched him harder, icier, when Stephen’s ragged chuckle ripped out.

“Woah, now! You done stole a neighbor baby!” he spluttered.

“Michael?” Peter’s mouth was gaping open.

“I didn’t steal it—her. The basket was left at the pad,” Mike tried to explain, his head wanting to thump with all the noise, the snatches of music and loud voices, the clinks of bottles, and the thickening haze of really good grass.

“Ah, some housewife hitting the bottle got dazed and confused, mistook the house. That’s why I stay away from the hard stuff.” Stephen’s tone was pious as he inhaled the last of the joint and stubbed out the roach.

“I don’t think that’s – You got anything constructive to say?” Mike challenged.

“Hell yeah. Get one of the chicks here to look after the kid and we all head on—”

“ _No_ ,” came from both Mike and Peter at the same time, making them look at each other. Swift pleasure jolted through Mike on glimpsing the flicker of _I expected better of you, Stephen_ in Peter’s glance. “My part’s done?” Peter added.

“Yeah. And thanks for coming at short notice, _cher_.” Stephen grabbed Peter in another hug, one that finished in a slap to his back. “Hey, Pete’s out, guys,” he shouted out.

Mike grabbed the basket from Peter as he went to say his goodbyes. He tried not to spy after him, see if any chicks were included and if so, how familiar Peter was with them. Peter would expect better of _him_ , too. Hell, Mike expected better of himself. He rested the bassinet on the table, tiredness making it heavier.

“I’m pleased for ya,” Stephen said, following Peter with his gaze, in the way Mike was trying not to, then eyeing Mike.

“Thanks. Really…thanks.”

“And if we could use some pedal steel gee-tar, I’ll give ya a call?”

Mike had to be honest, especially with Stephen’s blue-eyed gaze fixed on him. “I play some, sure, but I’m not an expert. There’s guys in town better by several orders of measure.”

Stephen gave a slow one-shake of his head, the gesture taking Mike back to his southern roots. “Ain’t about expertise. I don’t want this”— he laid his palm against Mike’s and slotted his fingers through his —“or this.” He dropped his other palm onto the top of Mike’s head.

“No?” Mike pulled his hand free and shook his head.

“ _Non._ Want this and this.” Stephen slid his hands down to slap then rub them against Mike’s chest and stomach.

Mike still felt the touches, the appeals to his heart and gut, as he drove home, Peter behind him in the dark-green Jeep. They hadn’t talked much prior to setting off, except for Mike saying, in as careless, casual a tone as he could muster, “Stephen called you last minute?”

“First thing, actually.” Peter searched Mike’s face. “I was about to head out to the waves. He got a sudden _envie_ , as he’d call it, to add banjo to a track. And like everybody, they always need another guitar.”

Mike nodded. So there’d been no time to warn him, or even to say anything. There’d been nothing underhand, no hidden motives. He’d known that. Just…still had a hard time believing it. It being Peter made it easier though, and he hoped Peter knew that. Understood that. He’d make it up to him later, for his…not suspicions, but the noxious cloud that tried to rise, to envelop him, in situations like this.

All the plans he’d been making earlier for him and Peter played through his mind and he smiled into the rear-view mirror, wondering if Peter could see him. Yeah, he’d bust out the massage oil, soothe Peter’s shoulders, weary from hours bent over playing, soon as they sorted this out…

They pulled into the driveway, Mike first, and getting out first too. Well, he didn’t have a bassinet to deal with. “Right here,” he said, inside the garage, anticipating Peter’s question and showing him the base of the crib thing. The baby started crying so Peter took her out. She was bigger, free, unfolded from her basket. Maybe bigger than Henry. So, older? Or were girls bigger than boys at that stage? She seemed louder, anyhow. And redder of face and sweatier of hair.

“She must be hungry.” Peter gazed around, but like Mike, could see nothing else left with the visitor. Well, not likely to be if someone had mistaken the address. “She’ll need changing soon too.”

“Well then, I guess we better go see who’s missing a baby.” He waited for Peter to place not-Henry back in her temporary home and ushered them both out. They’d just driven along North Beechwood and seen nothing out of the ordinary, but somehow Mike was expecting to see a panicking woman running around in the early evening sunlight, maybe pounding on doors, screaming about her baby. Nope, nothing. They each took a handle of the basket, carrying it between them.

“I tried the Purdeys’,” he said, seeing where Peter was heading. “No one was home.”

There still wasn’t, when they tried again.

“It _is_ strange.” Peter’s brow was furrowed as they made their way along a stretch of sidewalk, then crossed the road and continued on, slowly, giving a confused mother a chance to catch up with them. It felt quiet and calm, which was almost surreal after the events of earlier in the day.

“So it was okay today?” Peter shaded his eyes to examine Mike.

“What?” Huh. The thought transference thing. He was used to it, but it still surprised him, although it shouldn’t. “Yeah. Went okay.”

“Where’re the others?”

“Still there.”

“ _What?_ ” Peter looked up from settling the baby, her fingers gripped around one of his.

“Oh, not at the…mission, for want of a better word. There was a party thing after.”

“It went that well, huh? Champagne, medals, speeches? Freedom of the city’d be groovy.”

“No, wise guy.” Mike booped Peter’s nose in retaliation. He loved running a finger down that slope and off the end of that tip. A tiny touch like that they could just about get away with in public. He wanted to do more, of course. Now, in particular, to run his hand up Peter’s leg, under those cut-off shorts…and Peter knew it.

Mike laughed as a memory struck him. “Mick thought he’d get a blonde in a two-piece after.”

“He would. He thinks that a lot. I don’t think it’s ever happened, but it doesn’t stop him expecting it. And things are…cool?”

 _Between them…with the agents of authority…_ “Yeah. Yes. Really.”

“Michael—thanks.” The look Peter gave him said all that words couldn’t, especially not in public, as did Mike’s answering nod.

“Hey, good morning,” Mike said. He hadn’t said it yet that day. “Love you,” they said together, their grins identical.

“Pair’a right soppy buggers.” Peter’s Davy impression, intoning a phrase he used to describe them when they got ‘lovey-dovey’, had Mike guffawing. He had to focus to walk, still bearing his share of the weight of the basket, in which not-Henry was chirping. Peter cooed back.

They found themselves walking to the small strip of local stores they called the parade, because Davy did and they liked the name and image it evoked for the semi-circle of retail premises around a forecourt. With sidelong looks at each other, they hurried past the laundry quickly and silently, and Peter went to go in the supermarket.

“What, you’re thinking we can put up a poster in the notices section – lost baby?” Mike queried, jerking his chin toward the store.

“No, I’m thinking we can get supplies here. She needs things.” Peter tugged them both inside and made unerringly for the baby care aisle. He tutted. “I’m not sure I approve of disposable diapers.”

“I’m not sure I approve of the price,” Mike replied, pointing with a weak finger.

“They’re bad for the environment. Oh, excuse me, do you have cloth diapers?” Peter asked an assistant, to be told there was no demand for them.

“Plus we’d hardly be able to launder them,” Mike pointed out, then shook himself. “Peter, she’s not— This isn’t…” Peter’s look said he’d caught what they were doing, too. This was temporary, for all it had already begun to feel normal so quickly.

There was no help for it but to bite the financial bullet, he guessed, looking from box to box. “Which ones? Not the brand—the size.”

“Ah.” The diapers went by weight and age, neither of which they knew. “That one.” Peter went to take a red and white box, seemingly at random.

Mike grabbed a smaller version of it. They didn’t need that many. “Food?” he reminded Peter.

“We don’t know what she eats—”

“For us?”

Pity the CIS didn’t pay for jobs done. Mike briefly wondered how much that agent who wanted to become a contractor would get paid per assignment, as he worked out what they could afford to buy after spending on the supplies for their unexpected and not-staying-long guest. The usual packet of noodles and sauce for meatballs. Fruit for dessert and breakfast tomorrow. Bread and sandwich fixings for lunch tomorrow. _And no beer._

“A whole tin of formula?” Mike belatedly spotted it in the cart.

“She’s hungry.”

“So’m I!”

Here.” Peter ripped open a pack of sweet wafers and slotted one in Mike’s mouth. “Honey.” He could have been telling Mike the flavor, or indicating they were near to a display of jars of the syrup in question. He broke off the flavored wafer and took the other half himself.

“Thanks. Sugar.” Mike pointed at a shelf of packets of the foodstuff. Half pun, half code, they’d worked out ways to use endearments in public. “Won’t we need a bottle?”

“There’s one in that small box of Henry’s left-behind things in the No-Room.” Peter added a jar or two of baby mush to the cart, tutting that this prepared, manufactured stuff wasn’t…

Not-Henry waved a chubby hand over the side of the bassinet they’d tucked into the front of their cart, and Mike held out a finger for her to hold. It felt…normal. He pushed back against the feel of acceptance, of inevitability that was settling over them. “Let’s hope when we find the parents, they refund us,” he commented.

Outside, Mike hefted the basket, then swapped with Peter for the groceries. “Has she grown, got heavier, since we left the pad?” he mused. He was tired, and horror movie scenarios of mutant babies were trying to play through his head. And the way calmness reigned along Beechwood was creepy. “So, what now? Ask neighbors? Knock on doors?”

“We can’t.” Peter took another wafer. “It sounds crazy and it’ll get back to Babbitt. Remember how mad he was about the party last month, and that someone left a dog behind? He’d use this as an excuse to declare us immoral or licentious premises and evict us.”

“Your friend Stephen”—Mike really had to stop prefacing the guy’s name like that— “thought it was a blitzed housewife mistook the house and left her kid. But who’d be so confused they’d leave a living breathing human behind and…” He slowed, catching Peter’s eye.

“Nyles!” they exclaimed together, pointing at his house.

“Be discreet,” Mike urged, when Peter opened the door, feeling he’d said that enough already today.

“Nyles!” Peter shouted, inside the living room, trying to get the guy’s attention. “Have you…lost anything?”

“Faith that this government will do anything to stop the war in Vietnam,” Nyles answered, his face despondent.

“Start small, babe,” Mike counselled Peter. “Nyles, you been outside today, good buddy?”

“Not bodily, no.” Nyles shook his head.

“Ok-ay. You…heard any local gossip?”

“Yeah…Davy was seeing Clarisse and Joyce at the same time, but on different days!” Nyles whispered.

“ _Mother and daughter?_ ” Peter sounded scandalized.

“Do they _know_?” Mike asked, before checking himself. “No, not that kinda gossip, Ny.”

“Oh, gotcha.” He looked from one to the other and winked. “Which is groovy, by the way. Yeah…Emil, the assistant at the meat counter in the super? Got a wicked strong crush on Micky. Gives him his extra big sausage. Saves it for him _._ ”

Torn between “ _Lucky Micky_ ,” and “ _What?_ ” Mike shook his head. “We’re getting nowhere.”

“No, wait – it’s true!” Peter caught Mike’s arm. “I saw the guy slip him a sausage. For free!”

“Hey, that’s cool.” Nyles took a wafer from their packet and spoke through the crunch. “You pay two-dollar-fifty a ticket at the Bounce House off Highland to see that stuff live.”

“No, free to Micky. I mean he didn’t charge him for the extra,” Peter tried.

“What, Emil hooks too, as well as being a butcher’s assistant? Oh man, butchers hook—butcher’s hook!”

“Come on, Peter,” Mike said, when Nyles curled up in a crumb-spluttering heap, giggling at his own joke.

“You forgot your baby,” floated after them.

With a muttered, “ _Fuck_ ,” Mike doubled back for the basket. “Well, guess that shows it’s easily done, huh?”

“Yeah, but you’d go back for it. And who would have been in the garage to leave it?” Peter asked, checking on imposter-Henry as they walked.

“Burglar? Stealing Micky’s latest invention?” Mike, despite being the one to make the joke, shivered a little, recalling earlier.

“And who would take a baby along on a burglary?” Peter continued, puzzling it out like one of the detective stories he enjoyed.

“Maybe they couldn’t get a sitter.” Mike smothered a yawn.

“No—it’s the sort of thing you put down to take your key out. Then, say you’ve got stuff on your mind, you might go inside as usual and forget, but…” He trailed off, narrowing his eyes at Mike, who gulped, caught red-thoughted.

“Peter? I didn’t tell you how hot you looked earlier, playing.” Mike was shameless, sure, but it was true.

“I’ll take that in the spirit in which it’s intended.” Peter’s attempt at pursed lips ended in a dimpled smile. “Playing with confederates.”

“With—really?” He hadn’t known the group’s name, and now smirked, then laughed.

“Yup. No article and no initial capital,” Peter continued, as Mike, still sniggering, opened the door and let them in. They both wrinkled their noses: the baby hadn’t smelled in the open air, but inside the pad…

Peter rested the basket on the coffee table and went into the No-Room, to return with a small box out of which a cuddly giraffe poked its neck. Weird things did get left behind in the pad, Mike supposed, looking around. His gaze fell on the telephone. “I’d better call the cops.”

“Michael, you can’t.”

“Can—the phone’s right there, and we haven’t been cut off.”

“ _No._ ” Peter’s voice came muffled from where he had his head bent over the Moses basket he was digging through, right to the lining.

“Oh, you think social services would be better? Child protection? Peter, we can’t exactly stick up flyers on telegraph poles about a lost baby! _Peter?_ ” Peter’s stillness alarmed Mike.

“We can’t get the authorities or welfare involved.” And the strange note to Peter’s voice alarmed Mike more.

“Why?”

“Because of this.”

 _This_ was a piece of paper Peter held out and that Mike dashed to his side to see. It was dripping and stinking with urine, and he barely made out _1334_ on the front of the folded sheet. He gave a tiny nod in answer to the question in Peter’s eyes and Peter opened the paper. It was so soaked that most of the ink had run, and only the last line of typewriting remained.

_relying on you to look after our baby._

When Mike raised his head, Peter’s face wore the same open-mouthed, saucer-eyed look he knew his did too.


	6. Chapter Six

“ _Our_ baby?” Mike echoed. Exclaimed. Exploded. Yeah, his speech was loud enough, and the plosives popped loudly enough that the baby started to cry. “But that means—”

“Michael—”

“One of _ours_! One of _us_ , I mean!”

“This isn’t the time—”

“ _Whose?_ ”

Definitely-not-Henry yowled and kicked.

“Michael, not _now_!” Peter raised his voice over the two sets of wails, one baby-made and one adult-sized. “We have to see to her first.”

“Goddammit!” Mike cried.

“I know.”

“But—”

“ _Mike!_ ” Peter all but yelled.

“I keep this goddam place packed to the rafters with rubbers!” Mike paced, stamping his feet hard. “Even when we don’t have money for…deodorant, say, I make sure there’s condoms!”

“Maybe if we don’t have deodorant, we don’t need condoms.” Peter hefted the baby from her basket and eyed Mike.

“That supposed to be a joke?” He scowled. “I go out of my way to stock every room—”

“And the car,” came in a mutter as Peter rifled around in the brown paper grocery sack. “And the garage. And I want to know why.”

“I told you why.” Mike dug a toe into the floor and scrunched it around. “But what I’m saying is, this place is provisioned with prophylactics and—”

“And maybe it wasn’t in this place. Ever think of that?”

The wind sucked out of his sails, Mike found himself in front of the stove, heating up a jar of the baby food Peter had slapped into his hand before he’d headed into the bathroom with the fire-engine-red-faced, fire-siren-loud-voiced baby. He forced himself to focus on that, on boiling the kettle and pouring hot water into a bowl to stand the glass jar in, on washing his hands, on searching out a plastic spoon and a paper napkin. Concentrating on the here and now, on the physical, not the who and when, the metaphysical. It didn’t take long and he headed for the bathroom, to stop and stare at the sight.

Peter in those cut-off shorts was a sight in itself, the way they showed off his toned legs. But add to those just-muscled-enough legs his forearms, revealed as he’d rolled his sleeves up… The slant of the sun through the window, illuminating Peter’s fine, golden hair. The flex of his muscles as he supported and splashed the cooing, giggling, kicking baby…

Mike’s mouth watered. Peter turned where he sat by the side of their rarely used bath…to show Mike he’d unbuttoned his shirt too, leaving it on as a frame for his chest, Oh, unfair. Well, very fair, hair-wise, that perfect golden vee between his pecs, which showed off to perfection those small pale-pink nipples. Or maybe they drew the eye to the patch of hair. Mike wasn’t sure. Peter’s abs were hairless, but a trail started just a little bit above his bellybutton and grew thicker underneath it, leading down to—

“ _Michael!_ ”

By the tone, Peter was repeating himself.

“’S’my name,” Mike muttered, coming closer.

“Catching flies?” At Mike’s frown, Peter assumed a slack-jawed, open-mouthed expression, presumably an impersonation of Mike gawping at Peter.

“Funny guy.” Mike bent low, low enough to get a hand in the bathwater and splash Peter. The baby kicked harder and thrashed her chubby arms, squeaking in joy. Or hunger. “Here. Poolside waiter service.” Mike sat cross-legged facing Peter, who lifted Henrietta-for-now out of the water and swaddled her in a towel, to sit her on his lap, facing Mike.

Mike swirled the spoon around inside the warmed jar of pap, then lifted a little toward the baby, who screwed her mouth shut at the touch of the spoon on her lips. “C’mon, l’il missy,” Mike coaxed, wiggling the spoon, at which she turned her head away, as best she could, it wobbling on its rubbery neck. Mike tried again, with a whooshing airplane sound effect and visual, then that of a cho-cho train, at which the baby started howling again and struggling in Peter’s hold.

“God—”

“ _Pas devant les enfants_!” Peter hissed. “Even if there’s only one.”

“She don’t like the brand?” Mike queried, examining the jar. “Or the flavor?” Although he thought from having fed Henry they were all the same.

“I think she wants to go back into the water.”

And yep, as soon as Peter lowered her again, she was all smiles and gurgles.

“Well, she’s gotta eat something.” Mike wasn’t being bested by a tiny scrap like her. He could out-stubborn Davy—this kid wouldn’t stand a chance. “I’ll make up the bottle.” Although he was kinda reluctant to leave. It was a nice sight, and warm and cozy in the bathroom.

Not when he got back with the prepared formula though. “What’s that smell?”

Peter gave a tilt of the head toward the now-abandoned bath from which he’d plucked the baby, and one glance at the yellowy-brown sludge draining with the water told Mike all he needed to know. “Je— yeah yeah. _Pa’s doves lays infants_. I know.” At this rate, with them censuring their language, the swear jar would take a hit.

He swore when the duo left the room though—Peter sliding the bottle from Mike’s hand to give to the baby left Mike with the clean-up. _Add industrial-strength bleach to the groceries list_ , he thought, trying to clean the bath with his eyes closed and one hand blocking his nose and mouth. Well, it needed a scrub, he supposed. God knew when it’d last been cleaned.

“That was quick,” he exclaimed on seeing the empty bottle in the den, where Peter had the baby diapered and was wrestling her into a white two-piece sailor suit. Mike tried not to notice the nautical design. Today had been full of echoes and reflections and he deserved a break. “And that’s kind of small.” Was she bigger than Henry? Too big for this left-behind romper outfit, at least.

“Maybe there’s more of his stuff, and bigger items, in the closet.” Peter took for-now-Henrietta off to rummage around and Mike resigned himself to getting stuck with clean-up. Again. He was back at the stove, mixing another feed, when a banging on the window, right near his head, made him jump, spill hot water down himself, and curse.

“Mike, we need the pad!” came Davy’s voice, a second before he jumped up to make himself seen.

“And…you’re here? At the pad?” Mike hoped, really hoped, Davy hadn’t gone crazy too.

“No, to ourselves, for the evening!” came on another boing.

“Ohhh?” Nyles had said something about Micky and the butcher guy, and Mike had thought he’d seen Micky ogling Davy a time or two. “So you two…”

“And our dates!”

Yeah…that made more sense. God, he must be tired. Mike waited for Davy to jump into sight again, although he could hear the l’il biscuit perfectly well without seeing him. He wouldn’t say anything though. This was more fun than he’d had most of the day.

“We clicked with two Sonnys, two birds from the Cheetah Club, and invited ’em back for a bite to eat, so Micky’s at Pop’s with ’em now, getting it. The pizza, I mean,” Davy added the last bit on a subsequent bounce, very quickly, before any wise could be cracked from inside the pad.

“With what cash?”

“They’re springing for the grub.”

“Oh, man, that’s—”

“And we’re getting the pop. Well owing Pop for the pop.” This was tacked on before Mike could repeat his _what cash?_ question. “So we need the pad.” The scraping noise was Davy dragging a chair over to kneel up on. Mike had wondered when he’d think of that.

“Oh, but, Davy—”

“It’s our turn. Well, must be. We’re always clearing out for you two.”

“Well, true, but there’s—”

“So you two lovebirds can spend time on your own.” He was ladling it on thicker than the English gravy he loved. And the custard. “You owe us,” he ordered. He cocked his head. “And quick—think that’s their car. I’ll stall ’em.” With a stern look, Davy vanished

“But…” Mike was still trying to protest when he and Peter found themselves sneaking out of the sundeck door. Peter, halting to wrap a length of fabric around himself, risked a look back.

“Michael? Why…are they all dressed like that?”

He’d forgotten about the outlandish costumes. With all that happened since, that had unbelievably slipped his mind. “Don’t ask unless you really want to know,” he cautioned Peter.

“Put your hand on me here. Nice and firm…”

Now that was an order from Peter he could normally get behind, or in front of, or any way, really, but _here_ and _firm_ involved pressing the baby to Peter while he swaddled her to his chest, secured by the criss-cross of fabric, over his now-buttoned shirt. “Spoilsport,” Mike mumbled, meaning both of them. Still, it left Peter’s hand free, to knock against Mike’s, or even brush along it, if they were sure no one was paying attention, as they walked.

“Where we going?” Mike thought to ask, wrenching his mind from the noodles and sauce he’d been planning on for dinner, and oh wow, the Pop’s pizza pie he was convinced he could smell behind him. The tomato and oregano aroma wafted stronger than the cooling sand and emptying waves of the evening beach. The situation—the note, the baby—tumbled down on him like a house of bricks. “Somewhere we can talk?”

“Later.” Peter’s jerk of his chin back at the pad made his meaning plain: this was a matter for all four of them.

“Five,” Peter corrected, cradling the baby’s soft head where it rested on his chest.

Mike reached up to slot a finger through her hand where it curled outside the papoose. “It don’t…seem real,” he said finally, even though her fingers were on his and he could smell a faint trace of, well, _baby_ , he supposed, a scent apart from the faint trail of strawberry that must have been a dab of Peter’s shampoo, used as bubble bath, and body and hair wash. Milk and clean linen… “Barney’s? Grab a burger and a beer?”

“It’s a date,” Peter said, the light in his eye and tilt to his lips making the cliché meaningful and full of promise…and Mike smile in return.

In the end, they had sodas and coffees with their burgers, feeling weird about drinking any kind of alcohol around a baby. They also sat outside, as Peter had gone to a talk at the HearSay about the dangers of second-hand smoke, following articles that had been published on it last year. “You don’t like it either,” he reminded Mike.

True: Mike, although he smoked on occasion, didn’t like being in a small enclosed space with people smoking. He resolutely didn’t think about the last time he’d been in a confined space with a smoker, pushing the image of J and the hotel room out of his mind’s eye. Peter was too preoccupied feeding girl-Henry another bottle and patting her afterward to catch Mike’s thought. One good thing about their surprise visitor, anyhow.

“Here.” Mike held out his hands for her, indicating he’d put her up against his shoulder and try burping her. Peter didn’t seem to be having any luck…although he was attracting a few looks. Chicks, of course, gawping moo-cow-eyed at him through the windows of Barney’s, the look girls usually reserved for Davy.

Mike stood, patting the baby’s back and showing the gawking crowd Peter wasn’t alone, wasn’t some tragically widowed young father, some blond, handsome, and sexy as all-get-out single parent needing a caring young woman for his motherless infant. Showed by his glares, mostly.

“It’s not doing anything.”

“Oh, it is,” Mike corrected Peter—the girls at the prized window table were no longer bobbing up and down and craning their necks like they were on springs. He hoped none of ’em planned on working for telephone answering services when they grew a little older, time it took ’em to get the message.

“Maybe she doesn’t need burping. Maybe babies don’t, after a certain age, if they get formula and not food—like, they digest it all, or need it all, can’t spare any even to burp?” Peter mused.

“We got a medical dictionary back home. We can check. And if that doesn’t have any info on burping, Micky should know all there is to know about it. He does enough of it.”

“Hmm. Hope they don’t get into competitions.”

That set Mike off chuckling. Peter had finished his burger and fries while Mike had been holding the baby, so now took her to allow Mike to scarf down his reheated ones, Barney depositing the warmed-over meal on the table with a wry twist of his lips. Surely he didn’t— He _must_ think they’d been landed with last-minute neighbour-sitting duties. Mike…didn’t want to ask. He tangled his feet with Peter’s under the table and got a brief press of Peter’s ankles either side of one of his before Peter shifted.

“We’d better go. We didn’t bring diapers with us.”

Oh. And yet despite this lapse, Peter made it seem easy, strapping new-Henry to him with her facing outwards, taking in the world. He brought his hands around to his chest and she grabbed at his fingers, holding both his hands. Peter laughed. Mike…tried not to mind. “Is that the best way?” He pointed at her.

“I don’t know,” Peter admitted, his brow creasing.

Mike felt mean. “She looks fine.”

The beach had emptied more, and their steps slowed to a meander. A wander, almost, but one that took them the length of the sand, home. “Can we sit a while?” Mike asked. “Can’t go in, anyhow.”

Peter made the sling into a blanket and put the baby down. “Move over a little.” He directed Mike with his hand. “Block the sun. She hasn’t got any sunscreen on and she’s fair so she could freckle or burn.”

They enclosed her, almost, and Mike felt enclosed too. Not hemmed in, but as if they were suspended, in a peaceful-sand and whispering-sea bubble, the dark green of his shirt and the mid blue of Peter’s with the white and pink of the baby in between them. Calm. There. “Peter, this…” he tried, gesturing. “This is…temporary.”

“Everything is,” came Peter’s reply. Then he clicked his tongue. “Sorry. Did that sound—”

“Pretentious? Yeah, just a bit. Still love ya, though. Count yourself lucky you’re sexy.”

“I do.” If Mike was grinning, Peter was smirking. “So are you. I like you at sunset. Your hair shines and your eyelashes look twice as thick in the slanting sun, with the way the shadows fall, you know? I’d draw you in this light if I could catch it.”

Mike blushed. “I saw your drawing of me. Well, it had my name underneath. It was just lines, long and short, straight and curved. Is that, like, abstract?”

Peter shook his head. “Essence. Which sounds even more pretentious, right? What?” Mike was laughing.

“Oh, nothing. Just remembering…wasn’t that a pick-up line of yours at one point? Staring at a chick and moving your hands around, then saying you just really wanted to sketch her? That ever work? Any of ’em peel off for ya?”

Peter pleated his lips, then unfolded them to say, “More than you’d think!”

The baby joined in the chuckles that knocked them to their backs on the cooled sand.

“Look.” Movement on the deck caught Mike’s attention, and he pointed to where either Davy or Micky was putting a chair out there—the signal that those who’d left the pad to give those inside privacy might now come back. “Guess they didn’t get any.”

“It’s a week night. I bet the chicks have curfew.” Peter stood and tucked the baby under an arm.

It was when they got to the sundeck and were preparing to go in that reality hit Mike and he almost stumbled. The baby they were taking in with them wasn’t a visitor, a kid they were watching and who they’d hand back. She was there because she was _our baby._ But…whose? Dumbly, he stared at Peter, who caught his hand.

“I know. We’ll get through this together.”


	7. Chapter Seven

Micky turned on hearing them come in. “Hey, guys. Oh, hi, Henry. Shelley dump him on us again? Wait…” Eyes narrowed, he approached. “That’s not Henry. What… No. _Who_ is he?”

“She,” Mike corrected. “Davy? Could ya come here too, please?”

Davy, mid-flopping onto the couch with a magazine, blithely ignoring the gaping-empty pizza box and used paper napkins and dirty glasses, straightened at Mike’s request and came over slowly, eyebrows raised.

“We got something to tell you. Now, Micky, don’t overreact, but, well, see…”

“Someone left this and this,” Peter finished for Mike, the first _this_ being the baby he patted on the head and the second being the barely legible and still stinking note he held out between Davy and Micky, folded as it had been, with their door number on the outside. They both took it and opened it, gingerly and—

“ _Micky!_ ” Mike jerked backward to avoid Micky falling on him when he hit the floor in a dead faint. The _whump_ his collapsing body made was loud. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I said _don’t_ over-react!” Heads were hard, and feet vulnerable, he discovered, when Micky’s head crashed down onto his toes.

“It’s a bit ’ard not to.” Davy placed the note with care on the low table and backed slowly away.

Mike really wanted to clutch his injured foot while hoping in a circle on the other one, shouting and whimpering to relieve his feelings.

“Stand back. I got this,” Davy ordered, but pinned to the spot by Micky’s hard head, Mike wasn’t quick enough to comply before Davy threw a jug of cold water over the prone Micky.

“What the f—”

“ _Ahem,_ ” Peter broke in, covering the baby’s ears.

“—frodis d’you do that for?” Mike demanded, gritting his teeth and shaking himself like a wet dog.

“There’s no foam left in the extinguisher and the battery’s dead in the bullhorn.” Davy shrugged, his gaze still on the baby as though she might explode.

 _“…a dream?_ ” came faintly from the floor.

“No. It ain’t. Someone left her and we gotta take care of her from now on because she’s ours,” Mike told him maliciously, by way of payback.

Peter’s admonishing, “ _Michael!_ ” came at the same time as Micky flopped down again. At least Mike wasn’t in the target area this time.

“ _…a joke?_ ” came weakly from the still horizontal Micky.

A _gag_? Mike hadn’t thought of that, but now hope sheered through him so hard he could taste it, metallic and hot. No, it _rang_ through him, striking him like he was a bell and it was the clapper. He could hear the _ding_ it made as it clanged out.

“ _No._ ” Peter’s denial rang louder. “Who’d do that, put an innocent baby at risk for a prank?”

Of course. “Here.” Mike bent to pull Micky up, mainly to hide his face, from which shame had chased away hope and left him limp and drained. “You okay?”

Micky nodded. “But…who’s her mother?”

“ _Mother?_ We don’t even know who’s her father!” Mike exploded. “Davy? What—”

“This.” He showed them the medical encyclopedia he’d fetched from the shelf. He leafed through it, frowning and held it up next to the baby a few times. “We need to know how tall she is.”

“Well, yeah, she’s about your size.” Micky nodded, and failed to duck the punch to his stomach. “Here,” he wheezed, passing over a retractable tape measure.

Peter held the baby up and Davy measured her, making her giggle. It probably tickled. “Seems she’s six months old,” he said, looking up from the book. Mike took it to check the series of drawings with lengths, weights and ages underneath.

“Six months ago was mid-February! That’s when she was born, so we need to think what chicks we were seeing back then!” Micky declared.

“Mick—”

“I got to third base with Donna. Well, okay, two and a half. Mayyybe two and three quarters. It was dark.”

“ _Micky—_ ”

“Peter, you had two ‘dates’ with Sallie from the Music Box at the Santa Monica Mall, one in the first week and the other in the second week of February, both on Wednesdays, both at the Mall, with you collecting her after she stayed late at work for inventory: the first a burger at Horace Heidt’s Java Time restaurant there and the second a movie at the Criterion Theatre there.” Micky paused to draw breath.

“ _What?_ ” burst from Mike.

“Mike, you were still putting the slow and not that sure moves on Bea, from the kiosk, also in the Mall,” Micky continued. “Hmm. Seeing a little bit of a theme here. I believe you went bowling then?”

“Micky, how—”

“Peter, why—”

“And Davy…” Micky’s trained voice rose above Peter’s attempt to ask how Micky how he knew, and Mike demanding to know why Peter had kept this secret. “Well, for Davy, we’d better get his book.”

“I don’t keep a diary.” Davy thumbed his nose at Micky.

“I mean the phone book,” Micky deadpanned. “So we can start at _A_ and work through.”

“ _MICKY!_ ” Peter’s shout brought silence, except from the baby, who started to cry.

“Now look what you did!” Micky scolded, taking the baby and jumping up and down with her, then waltzing her around, spinning and dipping her.

He had younger sisters, must know what to do, Mike reasoned. Unless…did babies respond to their, well, _fathers_? _Know_ them, on some instinctive level?

“That’s not right,” Peter continued, his assertion near enough to negate what Mike had been pondering, and making Mike jump. “It’s not a question of which women we were hanging with _six_ months ago. Think about it.”

“But you said she was six months old?” came as Micky blew raspberries on the baby’s stomach.

“There’s a difference of nine months between when a baby’s born and when it’s conceived.” Peter sounded a little bemused, a _surely you know that?_ note in his tone.

But Mick had odd gaps in his education. He’d been not home-schooled but studio-schooled, and by whoever was around. It meant he had a wealth of technical know-how about electronics and mechanics, a good working knowledge of explosives and an unhealthy interest in costumes, among other things, but not so much familiarity with basic biology, say.

Now, his entire face twisted in a frown as he tried to fathom it out. “So, meaning…”

“Meaning some bird one of us knocked up in early May 1965.” Davy helped him out.

“One of _us_?” Mike had seen a get out of jail free card in the shape of Davy, and now gave him a pointed look at that statement.

“Yeah.” Davy glared back at the three of them ranged in a line facing him. He crossed his arms rather than take the baby from Micky, so Peter took her. “ _Us._ You’re Monkees, not monks.”

“Well…”

Mike wondered what Micky had been going to reply to that, and the look he and Peter shared.

“Micky?” Peter laid a hand on his arm. “That aside, you seem to have uncanny knowledge of our dating history, or habits. You weren’t, well, following us, while we were out? Like, spying on us? Narrating, and making notes?”

“Peter, _no_!” Mike begged.

But, too late. Micky stood in laced-up desert boots, knee-length socks, baggy khaki shorts and a sleeveless jacket strung with equipment. He carried a huge butterfly net and radio mic, which led into the oversized recorder on his back. A pith helmet completed the look. “And today, dear viewers and listeners, join me on the trail of the often-spotted Davidicus Thomas Iones, a native of the shores of Manchester, seen now out of his natural habitat in California, the USA. Easily identified by his small size and luxuriant eyebrows, the Manchester Warbler…packs a punch,” he finished weakly, the BBC accent abandoned as he rubbed his abused arm.

“And there’s plenty more where that came from,” the Manchester Warbler assured him, unclenching his fist. “So come on, then, genius, what birds were we all seeing fifteen months ago?”

“Oh, it doesn’t go that far back! I only got a year’s worth of memory bank,” Micky lamented.

“ _Memory b—_ You’re not a _robot_ , are you?”

“Peter?” Mike exclaimed at that question. “Davy?” he squawked, when, at a signal from Peter, Davy dropped to his knees to examine Micky’s feet, then shook his head at Peter. “I…don’t understand much about today,” he confessed, sitting down heavily.

“You know where we’re going wrong?” Micky looked around the group. “We gotta approach this scientifically!”

“No—”

But again it was too late. Too late to stop Micky standing on a makeshift podium, next to a chalkboard. Along with his glasses, he wore both a lab coat and an academic gown—plus mortar board hat—and had the biggest stick of chalk Mike had ever seen. The board was quickly covered in circles.

“We don’t need a Venn diagram to work this out!” Peter protested. “At least…I hope not.”

“Fine.” Micky got busy with the duster and the board soon bore the word DAVY at the top. Nothing else. “Andrea,” he said, writing the name.

Davy shook his head. “I saw her over New Year.”

“Really?” Professor Micky looked intrigued.

“In the distance,” Davy explained.

“How far of a distance?” Mike inquired.

“Close enough to see she didn’t have a bun in the oven, all right?” Davy scowled.

“Caren!” Peter exclaimed, taking the chalk.

“Nah, mate. If I’d knocked her up, she’d have been knocking down the door with a shotgun and a preacher,” Davy replied. “Oh, sorry, Peter.”

With a quiet, “’S’okay,” Peter sat again.

“Emily,” Mike recalled.

“And you didn’t use rubbers with her!” Micky added, huge-eyed.

“What—How— No, I don’t wanna know, do I?” Davy eyed Micky. “Yeah, I hate using johnnies, man. It’s like wearing a corset.”

“ _Ooh,_ I _so_ wanna know how you know that.” Micky stared at Davy.

“Davy, protection!” Mike yelped.

“She was on the pill.”

“That’s not one hundred percent guaranteed.”

“Oh, it pretty much is.” Davy winked at Mike.

“I mean its success rate, no its sex rate!” Mike blew out a breath. “Look. Just…hold the baby for a second.” He wanted to test his theory about primitive recognition. It worked with chicks and their mother hens, didn’t it? Or was that something else? College had been a long time ago.

Davy took the baby, and she howled and burst into tears.

“Oh, a female who doesn’t fall for his charms.” Micky smirked. “Andrea,” he said to the baby, to no reaction. “Caren. Emily.” The baby grizzled. “She looks like Davy,” came his pronouncement. “And not just the size. Brown eyes—”

“Light hair?” Davy queried.

“Most babies are blond. I was,” Mike said.

“Me too,” said Micky.

“Well, there you go then. Look, she’s got Micky’s expressions and she’s whinging like he does,” Davy pointed out. “And she’s got long fingers, like Peter does,” he continued, straightening out the baby’s to compare them as he handed her back to Peter.

“Na-na,” came from the baby, her voice loud.

“Na…na…she wants her nappy changed, and she’s bossy, like Mike,” Davy finished.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Peter observed. “We need to focus on discovering her mother.”

“We can’t remember more names.” Micky pointed at the board.

“That’s no good. We need pictures, photos, to compare her to.”

“What’s _her_ name?” Davy asked suddenly. In the silence that followed, he said, “We can call her Ursula.”

“As in ‘little bear’?” Peter asked, puzzled.

“As in Andress, he means.” Mike scowled at the pipsqueak with his love of tall blondes, preferably in bikinis. Or even more preferably, out of ’em. “ _No._ ”

“Perdita,” Peter suggested. “Except, she isn’t exactly lost. She’s where she was put.”

“Fifi Moonbeam. It goes with Coco Sunshine. My sister’s name.” Micky smiled.

“No way, boy!” Mike fought not to slap Micky upside the head. “Mary Beth. A good southern name. What d’y’all think o’that?”

“I think, the sooner we find her mom, the better.” Davy stood. “Come on.”

***

“Erm, why are we at Toby’s?” Mike reckoned he spoke for all of them in asking that question, Davy notwithstanding. He paled. “Oh God. You don’t think Toby’s—” He couldn’t go on.

“And even if she’s not, we can tell her she is, and she’ll believe it and take Fifi!” Micky hissed. “Davy, I could kiss you!”

“And if I find you have, like when I’m asleep…” Davy shook himself. “No, you twit. Toby’s always taking photos, if not for fun, then for her various ideas and features, right? You know, like what local chicks are into at wherever place?”

“And she’s usually hanging out with us and takes pics of what the chicks we’re with are wearing, or what’s going on.” Mike nodded.

“So we can look through her albums for a familiar face, or to jog our memories— Get back!” Davy’s shout came just in time: Toby pulled up the drive, right where they were standing.

“Jeez, she drives as badly as Amanda,” Micky commented. “And at least Amanda has the excuse of things being on the wrong side. What’s Toby’s?”

 _She’s probably sitting on the wrong side, like the passenger and not the driver’s seat_ , Mike thought, but didn’t say.

“Hey, Davy. Oh, hi, guys.” Toby smiled. “Are you _all_ waiting?”

“Er, yeah?” Mike replied, suddenly conscious of how late it was.

“ _All?_ ” Peter asked.

“I pop over and make sure Toby gets back from her dates okay,” Davy admitted on a scowl. “You can’t be too careful.”

“I know, guys today.” Micky tutted.

Mike and Peter, both sisterless, looked at each other.

“We want to look through your photos,” Davy told her.

“Sure.” Toby led the way in and wandered off. “Help yourselves,” she called, not noticing the baby in the bassinet.

“Not to stuff in the kitchen, Mick.” Mike grabbed him back.

Davy scowled when Micky produced a magnifying glass and examined photos of each one of Davy’s exes, comparing their features to the baby’s. “Let’s do yours,” he snapped. “Oh, wait, we can’t—you didn’t even get a date during that time!”

 _He’s making up for it now,_ Mike thought. _Deandra, Amanda, Lola…_

 _Emil,_ Peter threw in.

He was copying Davy, Mike supposed. Especially with them sharing a room now.

“Oh look.” Davy tapped the heading FRAT APRIL FOOL PARTY. “Hey, Peter, it’s Janey.” His tone was still pointed.

 _Who? Oh yeah! That small brunette sorority chick._ “Little Miss Manners. When she came around to the pad, she didn’t speak. Just glared and shouted things out,” Mike remembered.

“She was shy!” Peter protested. “And no—we never had penetrative sex.”

Mike…didn’t know how to react to that.

“And talking of Peter, what about Elizabeth, his ex-wife?” Davy assumed a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression, but his eyes glinted. “Could be hers and she’s wanting another favor from us, so dropped the baby off while she’s off working or researching somewhere.”

“Or, or, what if she’s plotting to give Kincaid and Hart a baby, so she gave you one, to see what they’d do!” Micky added, pointing at Mike and Peter.

“That’s crazy. And in the time frame we’re talking about, I certainly didn’t have penetrative sex with her,” Peter assured them. “ _Michael?_ ”

Mike had run his eyes over the crowd of people at the frat party they’d played at, and now, with a slightly shaking finger, traced the face of a tall raven-haired chick he’d met there. A cool, confident chick who’d had no problem going after what she wanted…which at the time had been him.

“No,” he replied to Peter, believing him. “But…Kat and I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone reading the chapters could leave a comment, that'd be great - reason being, it took me a while to post this fic as I felt a bit doubtful about it, but have lots of ideas how to tweak it, so any feedback would be REALLY useful.  
> And if the feeling is your're all Beechwooded out and jonesing for something new, that'd be great to know too - I've got RPF ideas, for instance...


	8. Chapter Eight

“Peter? Oh, come on!” Mike, sliding into bed beside him, found Peter not sprawled out, delightfully naked in the middle of their double bed, but huddled on his side of it and _on_ his side, away from Mike…and wearing boxers and a tee. Forcing himself to relax and tamping down the irritation that was swirling in him and trying to rise to the surface, Mike rolled over to Peter and looped an arm over him.

“Hey, cookie…” he started, only to feel Peter stiffen under him, but…not in the usual way. Not the good way.

“ _Cookie?_ ” came in a clipped tone.

“ _Sugar,_ ” Mike amended, closing his eyes and wincing. There was muscle memory and there was…stupid memory. Old reactions. Old behavior. Which this situation was pushing him back into. He pressed harder into Peter and tightened his hold. “Sugar cookie?” When Peter didn’t respond, Mike nuzzled into the side of Peter’s neck he could access and walked the fingers of the arm he had over Peter up inside his T-shirt.

“Mah sugar,” he husked, thickening his accent. “Let’s see iffen we can’t make you feel good, hmm? Want me to stroke you off?” He whorled his fingers in Peter’s chest hair. “Let’s get you off, huh?” _And me, somewhere along the way, hopefully…_ He’d started to reverse the direction of his hand, heading for south, when Peter clamped his fingers around the wrist, arresting it.

“I’m tired, Michael.”

“And sulking.”

“And tired.”

Mike appreciated the honesty of that, and the way Peter’s grip around his wrist eased a little. “Yeah.” He slid over onto his back. “I’m whacked too, what with everything today…” If Peter had sulking as a weapon in his arsenal, Mike now reached for guilt. “It’s been rough. Tough too.” And served a double scoop. With sprinkles on. It worked: Peter rolled over onto his other side to face Mike, propping himself up on his hand.

“There you are!” Mike exclaimed. “There’s my darlin’.” He ignored Peter’s eyeroll, but really tried to see things from his…side of the bed. Peter had clammed up since Mike had mentioned Kat. “Pete, you knew I wasn’t a virgin when I met you. Before we got together, I mean.” Oh, fuck. Did that sound like a dig? _I didn’t mean it to_ , he tried, staring into Peter’s eyes. Not that he could read their expression very well in the bedroom’s dim light.

“’S’not just that.” Peter’s teeth worried his bottom lip. “Just…you must’ve really grooved on her.”

“What makes you say that, babe?”

“She wasn’t your type! She’s wasn’t tiny and blonde and arty…”

No, tall, rangy, dark-haired and…dominant. Mike had two types, and he’d rather not get into the second, right now. “I was horny, okay?” _Like now_ , he added, as loud as he could project, and heard Peter bite back a chuckle on catching it. Good.

“There’s more to it. I can tell.” Peter laid his hand on Mike’s chest, palm down, flat. “Will you tell me about it?”

“I…will,” Mike was surprised to hear himself replying.

“When?”

Jeez. And people thought Davy was stubborn… “I guess I’ll go into it with the therapist first, see how best…” Mike shrugged. “Or maybe when you come with me to an appointment?” And hell, if that didn’t surprise him more.

“ _Oh._ ” Seemed it caught Peter out, too. He moved close, to lay his head on Mike’s chest, butting into his shoulder, his signal that Mike should wrap an arm around him, like when they cuddled, spent and sated.

“Oh?”

“Yeah… I’m not in the mood.”

And damn if Mike didn’t feel the sly smile Peter pressed into the crook of his neck. Felt it like a _brand_. “That so, babe? What if I…got ya in the mood?”

“Oh yeah? How— _ummph_.”

The last noise was how Peter responded to being flipped onto his back when Mike manoevred out from under him and had him flat on the mattress in one slick move…and had his boxers down and off in an ever slicker one. “Oh, I got a few ideas,” he assured Peter. “Starting with you taking that shirt off, so I can see that sexy chest.”

“Sexy pecs,” Peter muttered, levering his top half up and skimming off his tee, obedient for once. He propped his head and shoulders up on the pillows.

“Now, I suppose you want me to finger you, seeing as how you dig that so hard.” Mike made it seem like a chore, but couldn’t keep the smile off his face, and caught Peter’s matching one when he looked up. “Want fingering until you come, I’d guess.” He was just about to lunge-swerve for the nightstand drawer when Peter twisted his top half over, stretched, and a second later the lube landed on the bed next to them. Peter’s non-verbal answer to Mike’s admittedly rhetorical question made him grin harder.

Peter’s dick was already stirring, and hardened more when Mike took it in his hand. “I might wanna help you along a little,” he whispered up Peter’s body, settling into position between Peter’s spread legs. He’d finger Peter, sure—Peter really did get off on it—but Peter’s cock was too tempting to ignore. Peter’s eyes, gleaming topaz in the half-light, said he understood what Mike had in mind. Would have in mouth, soon enough. Mike bit a hip bone on his way down, just to keep ahead in the game.

Oh, the way a sigh whooshed from Peter when Mike lowered his mouth over his cock. He took it slow and easy, teasing with his tongue before he took Peter deep down his throat, making him trade the sighs for a gasp. The low moan Peter gave when Mike sucked made Mike stop, though: it turned Mike on so much he caught himself starting to rub against the sheet under him. Sliding his mouth off Peter’s dick, Mike took a moment before moving lower and dragging the flat of his tongue with slow deliberation across Peter’s balls. That this made Peter’s entire body quiver pleased Mike.

“When did I last rim you?” he asked suddenly, his question bringing a flare of heat to Peter’s eyes. Mike made sure his next rasped order was one that would fire Peter even hotter. “Spread wider for me.” He nudged at Peter’s thigh to make his meaning clear.

Peter did, going one better in bringing his feet up, their soles flat on the bed, to splay his legs into a V. 

“God, Peter!” Mike shook his head, marvelling at the sight before him. “You’re so fucken hot. Just…” He had to search for words the same time as he groped for the tube of K-Y. “So sexy.” It seemed inadequate, especially when, his gaze never leaving Mike’s, Peter beat him to the tube and uncapped it, squeezing some out onto Mike’s fingers. It was such a simple action, nothing in itself, but that Peter was slicking Mike up for Mike to pleasure him, was preparing Mike so he could work on Peter… It was mind-blowing, and the look they exchanged during the act threatened to choke Mike’s breath in his chest.

“What, I ain’t moving fast enough for ya?” Mike husked, aiming for a joke. “Just for that I’m slowing down even more. Teasing you more…” And he did, stroking Peter’s opening, his touch soft on the outside. “Hell, I can’t deny you,” he confessed. “Not when you’re right there, laid out in front of me, waiting for me to make you feel good.”

“Better than good,” Peter started to reply, his words stolen when Mike dipped his head and ran his tongue up Peter’s cock. When he reached the head, he engulfed it in his mouth…and pushed three fingers inside Peter’s tight passage. Had Peter expected that stretch and burn, that fullness, right away? His arch off the bed and the way he flung an arm across his mouth to stifle any voiced reaction said not.

Mike waited a heartbeat or two for Peter to adjust to the fullness—he was always tighter than Mike expected, considering how often Mike fucked him. _Like a miracle._ Peter subsided, releasing his breath on a long exhalation. His channel relaxed around Mike’s fingers, making Mike slide them out and push inside again and, in answer, Peter bit his lower lip and let his thighs fall open that little bit more. _Little slut._ Perfect little slut, way he started to move his hips in time with the thrusts.

“Who’s in charge here?” Mike muttered, lowering his mouth down over Peter’s cock again. _Peter._ They both knew it and Mike wouldn’t have it any other way. He took Peter deep again, sucking hard, and curling the fingers he had buried inside Peter, wanting to hear the noise made in response.

“Michael—betterstop,” Peter gasped.

Yeah. He’d taken Peter near to the edge with his knowledge of his triggers, his responses…and doing that got Mike off too. He didn’t want to come like this. He sat back, sliding his fingers free and feasted his eyes on Peter, knowing he was responsible for that messy-haired, wild-eyed, flushed-skin look. “So goddam _gorgeous_ , babe,” he rasped. “How ’bout sixty-nine? Love to fuck your mouth. You—”

A wail started up from near the door. Within a second, Peter was off the bed, the top sheet wrapped around him, and rushing behind the screen they’d placed at the foot of the bed. Placed there to give them and the baby some privacy: them in their bed and Mary-Beth in the large wooden box they’d padded with towels and a blanket.

“Hey there, little one,” Mike heard, along with shushing and calming noises. “I would have gone,” he said.

“I’m here now.”

And still there, a while later. Mike tried to see the time. “Peter?” he whispered.

“I think it’s wind,” came back as Peter walked up and down a little more, patting and soothing.

 _And I think that’s a mood killer._ Mike tried to keep on the boil, giving himself a stroke every now and then, a pull every so often, but he kept dozing off and was asleep by the time Peter came back to bed.

***

Peter tried not to glare when Mike banged his mug on the side of the sink early the next morning. He’d no right to feel frustrated. Not even after they’d tried to give each other a quick hand job in the bathroom a few minutes ago, to be again stopped by the baby, wailing outside the bathroom door. No more right than Peter had. _He’s not more frustrated than me._

“What?” Mike turned to him. Peter must have been staring. Burning holes in Mike’s back.

“That…we don’t need coffee now? We can get breakfast there?” Peter improvised. “We’ll need some excuse for being there.”

“At a crappy student dive café, all the way out at Figueroa.” Mike was trying not to scowl, Peter could see.

Yeah, USC’s University Park campus and its surrounding streets wasn’t one of their usual haunts, but there could be reasons they were in the area…apart from acting on information from Toby that Kat, along with a lot of the students residing in her scholarship dorm, frequented Holly and Ivy, the cheapest eatery along that part of Figueroa Street, nearest to the campus.

“I don’t know,” Mike said again a little later when they parked the Jeep and walked slowly up the sidewalk, locating the café.

“You want to follow Davy’s suggestion and call her dorm?” Peter asked. “Do this over the phone?” Davy would, Peter thought. He blind-called chicks whose numbers he’d gotten, practically had dates over the phone, and dumped chicks over the phone too. Micky’s suggestion of leaving a coded message with the dorm switchboard had been a non-starter too.

“We don’t even know she’s there.” Mike scowled at a gaggle of co-eds who nearly banged into them. “Or here,” he added, as they approached the café. It was barely open, the staff still setting out the freshly made food on metal trays along the wall behind the counter.

“Better get a table?” Peter scoped out the place. They needed somewhere they could see the door and the counter: Kat might just grab and go. Maybe they shouldn’t have brought the baby. Were they trying to awaken the maternal instinct in the errant mother, or shame her into taking her daughter back? Peter genuinely didn’t know. He wished there’d been time to think his motives and feelings through properly…including those relating to Mike and the baby’s mother. It still seemed unreal. Well, that was what they were there for.

“Over there should do.” Mike jerked his head. “Hey.” He caught Peter’s arm as he turned to grab the table indicated. “Thanks. For…this. For everything.” His words came out in a mutter, like his lungs were reluctant to release the air needed to say them, or maybe his windpipe was constricted and couldn’t get them out. But the warmth of his hand on Peter’s skin and the look in his eyes as they made contact with Peter’s said it all. Peter let his nod in reply say all the things he wanted to communicate to Mike, and knew Mike got them.

There’d been no argument about it. Peter had said he was going along, and that was that. Again, he wanted to pull apart his reasons. Supporting Michael, of course. He needed backup, in something like this. And maybe…seeing him with a chick he’d used to care about? If…he had? Lost in his self-examination, Peter almost jumped when Mike returned with his coffee, Peter’s tea and some sort of omelet in a Styrofoam box.

“House speciality.” Mike set down two forks. He shook the box to get the yellow mass to settle.

“Filling. Keeps a person going. A broke student…” It suddenly sank in. Turned real. They’d been focused on the practical side, but now the emotional part of things hit Peter. He lifted the baby from the basket onto his knee and raised his eyes to Mike. “To have to leave her. What must she be going through? Couldn’t she have told us earlier, asked for help?” That a young woman felt she had nowhere to turn didn’t sit well with Peter.

“I guess she thought she had it under control?” Mike cleared his throat and took a gulp of coffee to help with whatever was blocking it. “I mean, if she came back to college this summer, for summer school…”

“Trying to get some of the credits she missed after missing last year…” Peter thought over what little information Toby knew, had been able to provide. Not much, seeing as Toby had been a year above Kat and had graduated last year. But she did know that Kat hadn’t returned to USC last fall, as she should have, for her final year, that she’d resurfaced only now, after a year away.

“We can help,” he said, seeing parallels with his ex, Elizabeth, who he’d enabled to get into college and read for the degrees she wanted. “I just wish Kat had told us. You, I mean. Why didn’t she?”

“Peter, I don’t know!” Mike checked that his outburst hadn’t drawn attention. “Maybe she tried. Maybe she didn’t know how. We weren’t really…so maybe she thought I wouldn’t—that I’d—”

“ _Nesmith?_ ”

The hand dropping down onto Mike’s shoulder from behind made them both start. A hand that Peter followed up, to its slim, tan arm, then to its shoulder and neck and face. Its very suntan face, whose wide lips were painted that tawny shade that was all the rage. A face he’d seen last night in photos, and who they were on the track of today.

“Nesmith?” Kat said again. She slid her fashionable sunglasses back into her glossy raven hair, revealing bright, shining eyes, pretty with mascara and liner, laughter creases in their corners. “I thought that was you! Helluva surprise for a Thursday! What are you doing here?”


	9. Chapter Nine

“Oh, what is this ‘What am I doing here’? What are _you_ doing here?” Mike blustered.

 _Real smooth, Nesmith._ Peter hoped Mike picked up on his thought.

“It’s my local,” Kat protested, pulling Mike’s hair in retaliation. Not a little pinch between thumb and forefinger—she slid her fingers into Mike’s dark waves and tugged at the roots…like it was a thing she did. A thing…they did?

Mike stood and, casting a sidelong glance at Peter, caught up a chair from the table next to them to pull over to theirs. “Kat, you remember Pete?” he asked, moving back for her to sit.

“I don’t think so…” It wasn’t some put-down—she frowned, trying to recall. Well, it had been over a year ago. She hadn’t been to the pad and they’d hardly double-dated. Kat, guessing he must be one of Mike’s band, right, reached out to shake hands and Peter turned to her. He’d been sitting hunched to one side to hold Mary-Beth-for-now out of the way of hot drinks and food, but now swivelled to let Kat see her.

“Wh— Oh wow.” She looked him up and down and her wide-eyed gaze settled on his face.

In that second, Peter understood this was no helpless, hopeless single mother, who’d though she could cope with resuming her studies, but who’d been eking out her finances, trying to balance her workload with taking care of a baby, all alone, lonely and desperate. And who, a mere couple of months into cramming as much as she could into summer school while planning to take another semester or two after, had given her daughter up. No way.

What had he hoped? That Kat’s suntanned confidence and brisk energy would drop like a mask before she sobbed and reached for her daughter, reclaiming her? Or that her dark eyes would harden as she crossed her arms and repudiated the baby, spitting at Mike that it was his turn, it took two to tango, the baby was his…and Peter’s…now?

 _No._ As Kat leaned forward to speak, Peter realized he’d been hoping for door number three, this door, the complete lack of recognition. And that knowledge stunned him. He really hadn’t known how much he’d wanted the baby…not to be Mike’s.

“You got a baby?” Kat lowered her voice. “Did you get married young and have a kid straight away because of the draft? My brother did. I’d split for the border.”

“No.” Peter took a huge, final swig of his tea, finishing it, and stood, hefting the baby to his chest. “I’d better walk her a little.” Kat went to stand, sensing something, perhaps, but he shook his head and threw a quick look at Mike.

“Sit a spell.” Mike picked up his cue just like he did when they played together. “Ain’t ya got time for a quick visit, there?”

She…must’ve got off on his accent. Peter paced a few steps, heading for the space to one side of the café but keeping the pair in earshot as much he could. Because he was interested in the girl, he insisted to himself. In her decisive, forceful vibe as much as where she’d been for a year. Not because he didn’t trust Mike with an ex. Well… Peter was curious, he realized. He’d seen Mike make out with a chick – Amanda – and had memories of him casually dating girls, but he’d never seen him with anyone he’d had some sort of intense heated affair with, like this.

A waitress came over to the table with a large bag of food and Kat handed over a five-dollar bill, thanked the woman by name and told her to keep the change. So she was a regular, like Toby had thought she’d be, and was collecting food for a small group in her suite or dorm? He edged nearer. Kat had a husky voice, a little deeper than most chicks. Did she sing? She’d be a contralto, he thought. It had a smoky tinge to it. Oh, a purr, he suddenly thought. She was called Kat, after all. Maybe that was nickname, because of her voice?

“…remember? What we said we wanted to do?” she was asking Mike.

“Yeaaah?” he answered in the way that Peter knew was a half-lie. It couldn’t have been anything that…sexually explicit, say, then. Mike would probably have remembered that. Probably have done that.

“I did it!” she exclaimed. “Western South America!”

“What, you got a chance to trek the Gringo trail?”

“I _made_ a chance. Picked the name of a hat to see which part of South America I got, then—”

“You tied on a blindfold—”

Peter stumbled a little nearer at Mike taking up the story.

“And pushed pins in the map to choose the places?”

“Uh-huh!” Kat leaned back in her seat so her hair hung over the back of the chair, and raked her fingers through it. “Got Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. But what about you? D’you get to Europe, see all those cities crammed full’o history? Especially Italy? Was that you?”

Mike’s smile was crooked. “That was my roommate, Micky. Always been on a Venice kick.”

“But did you travel?” Kat insisted, her voice throaty.

“Went to Harmonica.”

“ _Har–_ Where?”

“It’s kinda near Lichtenstein.”

“Never heard of it.” Kat shook her head.

“Yeah. They get that a lot. But tell me about your trip.”

Peter caught words here and there, but it was tricky with an influx of clients entering: all chicks who wanted to coo over the baby. He caught them checking out his hand – looking for a wedding ring, or maybe a less suntanned circle where he’d taken one off, he realized. One chick asked if he was out to give his…partner a break, and another, more brazen, asked if he managed okay all on his own. He looked down at really-not-Mary-Beth with new eyes. She had powers.

Kat described bus rides through and stargazing in deserts, volcanoes, lakes, floating islands and a swing over the edge of a cliff? Baños, was that? Peter tried to remember. She’d viewed pre-Columbian geoglyphs in the shape of animals, trees and flowers from a light aircraft and crossed the highest navigable freshwater lake in the world, a lake said to be the birthplace of the sun. Peter grinned: Davy laughed at the word _Titicaca_ , and claimed it was you called busty birds where he was from, like a code, so they didn’t know they were being discussed. As if.

“And I tried my best to get credit for it, claiming the history requirement, the language requirement, but no. What I did was ‘not affiliated to the institution.’” Kat made air quotes and imitated a nasal voice. “Jeez!”

“So you took a year out.” Mike threw Peter a look. Yes, he’d caught that.

“I thought, it’s now or never. And now I’m back.”

“Go Trojans,” Mike said, grinning at the college mascot logo on her bookbag.

“And _use_ Trojans,” came from Kat and two other random students nearby. It was obviously the standard riposte to any raahing, but Mike flinched, as well he might, with the pun coming close to the object of their quest here today.

“All right?” Peter asked, returning to the table and boxing up Mary-Beth-only-for-now. He bent to fork up the last bit of omelet. “Nice to meet you, Kat. I’m sorry we didn’t meet properly before…” _When you two were an item. Before we two were._ “I’ll wait outside,” he added.

Would she get the message? It didn’t matter either way. Even if Mike didn’t subscribe to the ‘you can’t bathe in the same stream twice’ view of…things, which Peter betted Kat did, he wasn’t paddling in those waters now. He hoped Mike wouldn’t be long, though. He had no reason to linger.

Peter had been in the jeep for a few minutes when he glimpsed Mike emerge from the café. He said a farewell—a quick hug—to his raven-haired ex and wandered back along Figueroa, almost going past the vehicle. “Hello?” Peter called through the window.

Mike looked startled. “I was looking for the Monkeemobile,” he confessed.

“I’ll drive,” came Peter’s reply. “Let’s get back.” Mike looked a little unglued. Peter wondered what he’d been through yesterday, how dangerous the mission had been. “I’m sorry.” He jerked his head back in the direction of the café to make his meaning clear. “So she took a year out to go see the world? Well, a part of it.”

“Yeah.” Mike rolled his shoulders. “We can cross her off, anyhow.”

“It seemed to fit,” Peter started to say, but the baby began her chirping singing noise once they were in motion, making talking difficult. She was loud. Mike was frowning at the sound of the engine when Peter accelerated, and muttered about how the carburetor needed checking.

Peter left him to it when they pulled into the drive. Michael needed a few minutes. Peter wondered what was unbalancing him more, that he’d gone through something like that or that Peter had seen a different side to him, a more…submissive side? Pondering the implications, he made his way in.

“No,” he said to Micky and Davy, who sprang up as he entered, the question writ large on their faces. Davy’s was almost comical in its sinking. “But you know what I did discover?” He beckoned them close and told them about the chicks swarming him both now, in Barney’s and at the stores yesterday. “And there’s plenty of chicks on the beach…” He pointed off the sundeck, hoping they’d go for it.

“Take her along—look after her?” Davy’s mouth pulled into a straight line. “Mick?”

“I dunno…let’s consult the oracle.” Micky pulled Mr. Schneider’s string.

“You catch more birds with honey,” the marionette intoned. Peter…didn’t think that was an actual saying or truism or axiom or anything, really. And he thought he detected the mannequin shrugging.

“Honey? _That’s_ her name?” Micky frowned. “Ooh, Honey Ryder! The part Ursula Andress played in _Dr No_ , Davy, when you first noticed her ah…mple ah…cting talent!”

“And her arse. And her tits,” Davy agreed.

“Language!” Micky shook the swear jar hopefully. Just as he often helped himself to nickels from it to buy sodas, Davy rarely put anything in. “It’s a sign, I tell you! I wanna see if there’s fawning, like Pete said.”

“And lusting. He said lusting too.” Davy’s round face was suddenly fierce, and Peter held out, _oh God_ , Honey for the pair to decide who was carrying her.

“Where’s…everybody gone?” Drying his hands on a sheet of the heavy-duty wiping paper from the roll in the garage, Mike entered through the front door just as Peter closed the sundeck exit on the trio. He shut out the laments floating back in an LA accent that they needed that camel back again, to take all the stuff a tiny baby needed, and the Manchester voice asking how was it they’d had a camel? He’d never understood…

“They left us alone. Lock the door.” Even after Mike, eyebrows raised, obeyed the order, Peter left a pause, for him to catch up. “So…that was Kat, huh?” He came nearer, letting the vibes build. “I guess I was expecting more of a wild cat. Pun intended.”

“Yeah… She’s calmer. Less—”

“Dominant?” Peter was putting tiny glints together, like the pattern of a mosaic, and what he gleaned…was something Mike needed to work through. Something _he_ needed to work through. “And you like being dominated. Occasionally.”

Mike tilted his head back to shoot him a cool look. “Go on?”

“But by chicks. Not guys. You only like chicks to take you down.”

“Woah there, shotgun. I let you take the lead. Let ya fuck me—top me good. I even let you tie me up.”

‘“Let me’.” Peter copied Kat in making quote marks with his fingers, catching Mike’s gaze on his hands. Mike loved his long, flexible fingers, and elegant yet strong wrists—adored watching him play keyboards. He’d said how he even liked to watch Peter smoking, to see his hand and wrist move as he did so. “How kind. Interesting word choice—and apt. But you’re only truly sexually submissive to women.”

 _Submissive_. The word hung in the air like a highly charged atom, and Peter waited for it to bind to the _dominated_ of a moment ago.

“I see.” Mike took a moment to assess. “And _you’re_ thinking that should change?”

Peter’s heart skipped a beat at that. Mike hadn’t shut it down. Hadn’t shut himself down. “ _Yes._ ”

“And you’re also thinking that _you_ should take me down.”

They were nose to nose now, literally—Peter in his face. Did he really want Michael submissive to him? Think Michael needed to submit? Possibly, and at some point. But here, now, this was needed, to restore…balance? _Them_ , Peter realized. “Yes,” he said again, even more emphatically. He shoved the heels of both hands into Mike’s shoulders and Mike barely rocked. “I’m fucken jonesing to now.”

“Oh yeah? Well let me show you what I’m in the mood for.” Mike barely seemed to move, yet was behind Peter, one leg between his, parting them, leaving him unsteady, and one hand twisting Peter’s right arm up behind his back, leaving the left to flail. He didn’t put pressure on the arm he immobilized any more than he pressed his knee into Peter’s balls, but his stance made it clear he could.

As Peter tried to balance, Mike slid his free arm over Peter’s hip to yank his shirt free of his pants and his fly down before forcing his hand in to cup Peter. “Oh, I’m not after this.” Peter growing under his fingers forced a huff of laughter from Mike, right into Peter’s ear, where Mike rested his lips. That this made Peter shiver made Mike stroke him more possessively.

“See you are though.” Nosing aside Peter’s hair, Mike bit the lobe before nipping a quick path to the tip. “No, this is what I’m after.” He pulled back to deliver a mighty slap to Peter’s rear. “Claiming that sweet, tight ass. And if we got ourselves a stand-off, you gonna fight me for it?”

When Mike wrenched Peter’s pants down low enough to land the next stinging blow on his bare cheek, Peter sagged. Mike’s low, deep, cry of triumph and satisfaction in subduing Peter affected Peter as much as the physical restraint. Husking into Peter’s ear what he intended on doing to him, Mike nudged him up the stairs.

“The bedroom?” Peter scorned, vibrating with such arousal that he staggered on the steps and rocked on the top one.

“No, _here_.” Released, his shirt whipped off him, Peter grabbed at the rail over the second-floor landing and twisted his head around to Mike. “Yeah, bent over in front of me, your obedient ass out for me to fuck.”

 _The way you need._ There was no need to voice it. They both understood that neither of them needed sweet and slow like they’d attempted last night, or even quick and slick, like they’d tried this morning.

“Get those damn pants off now.” Mike nodded at him. “I wanna see what I’m getting. Ya hardly gave me a fight—you better be planning on giving me a good ride, at least. And yeah, right here, for anyone to see me taking you.”

And as soon as he’d stripped his pants and briefs off, Peter was spun around and bent over the metal railing, with Mike there, hard behind him, his body pressed close. He slid a hand into Peter’s hair to pull his head back and take his mouth in a bruising kiss, his tongue invading and dominating before Peter could draw breath. And Peter couldn’t say which of them was digging it harder.


	10. Chapter Ten

_Different every time_ , Peter thought. No matter how often Mike took him like this from behind, him turned around and angled down, it was always different. Different locations, different things he was bent roughly over, different…vibes, even. But always that white-hot flare of arousal stroking them, burning through them. Like now, with Mike’s firm grip on Peter’s shoulders positioning him— _subduing him_ —and Mike’s scratchy half-chuckle underscoring how low down and dirty this was, bending Peter over to fuck him right here, out in the open, in a communal area of the pad.

Mike released one shoulder and slid his hand down to cup Peter’s balls, his touch as sure as always. He stroked Peter’s iron-hard dick, teasing over its leaking slit, rubbing in the precum and demonstrating mastery of Peter’s triggers. Mike’s hands slid free and Peter felt him slide down his back and legs. Peter didn’t understand until his ass cheeks were pulled apart and a glob of spit hit his hole.

“ _Mike?_ ” He slanted his head in alarm to look behind him. Mike was huge and tension made Peter tighter than usual. This would — Mike’s crooked smirk said _gotcha_ , and his slap to Peter’s ass let him know how much Mike had enjoyed that.

“Sadist,” Peter muttered, facing front again as Mike demanded, and listening to sounds from over at the lounger that was on the upper landing. Oh yeah, they’d stashed lube under the cushion where’d they’d fucked there a few days ago.

“Heard that,” greeted his ears. Then Mike was back, amid more noises of zips and lube, but there came no circling of a finger to Peter’s rim, much less one easing inside his passage, to swirl around the grooves and folds, preparing Peter for Mike’s taking of him. All he felt was Mike’s hands at his hips, then the blunt, hard tip of Mike’s lubed cock pushing at his hole, seconds before Mike shoved his way in, all the way in, hard and firm, at the same time pushing Peter lower, making him reconfigure his grip on the wrought-iron railing.

That distracted him from the stretch and burn, but not the rough, full pass over his prostate that almost took his legs out from under him. His half-startled, half-discomforted moan blended with Mike’s low, deep groan of satisfaction.

“Love you hot and tight like this,” was husked into his ear, and Peter had to lock his knees to keep them from folding in on him. He couldn’t stop his legs quivering, though. Mike’s bitten-off laugh at Peter’s reaction was dark and his response was to surge back inside Peter again, rubbing over that spot deep inside him.

By now Peter had adjusted to the fullness and force in his ass and was pushing back into it, making Mike increase the speed and pressure, hitting that half-pleasure, half-pain bump until Peter was panting and fighting not to drool. He couldn’t risk peeling a hand from the railing to get it to his cock, no matter how much he wanted to, and he betted Mike knew it. _Had planned it._

Just as he’d known the nuzzle into Peter’s check, the lick to the shell of his ear…combined with the hard, strong thrusts of his dick inside Peter was a devastating combination. As Peter readjusted to that dual assault on his sensory nerves, Mike shifted his hips so the head of his cock made contact with Peter’s gland only on every third stroke or so, making Peter fight to win more. Despite this unequal, unpredictable stimulation, Peter’s body was leaping toward climax…until Mike eased his hand to his balls, to tug them away from his body at such an angle to stop him coming—until Mike allowed it. Until Mike did.

“In the mood for a good pounding there, shotgun?” Mike purred in his ear.

“ _Always,_ ” Peter managed, thinking it unfair Mike was barely panting, wasn’t heaving in air, wasn’t flicking sweat from his hair. He shoved a back a little more, his reward Mike’s sawn-in breath.

“Want taking care of?” Mike’s question came out more fractured than he’d like. Peter nodded his bent-over head.

Mike clasped Peter nearer to him, _harder_ to him, and his thrusts became snaps, his cock a hard pressure right on that spot. “Got more f’ya,” he ground out, and Peter understood when the hand stopping him climaxing started to jerk him off, quick and forceful. “An’ more,” sounded in his ear right before Mike bit down, hard, on his shoulder.

Maybe Peter should have been self-conscious at how he climaxed on demand, _Mike’s_ demand, embarrassed at how perfectly, easily Mike could command him, but he wasn’t. He was too busy coming, Mike’s cock in his ass, Mike’s hand on his dick, his body jerking, his breath suspended, his vision and hearing whiting out. He didn’t think the noise he made when his cum spurted onto the railing in front of him had a name, but it had an echo in the cry Mike gave behind him.

Mike’s hips were curled tight into Peter’s ass and he thrust more, shooting into Peter, grabbing his hair again as he did so, to pull his head back for another bruising kiss, one Peter returned, biting at as much of Mike’s lips and tongue as he could.

“ _Fuuuck,_ ” Mike eventually breathed, pulling free and sliding down to the floor. Peter nodded in agreement, his legs finally giving way, depositing him next to Mike on the landing. He supposed he was luckier: a twist of his body had him sitting against the railing, supported, while Mike flopped loosely, half sitting, half on his knees.

“You leave any cold drink there?” Peter, getting his breathing under control, gestured at the lounger from where Mike had retrieved the tube of K-Y. Mike shook his head, the action sending a sweat droplet flying. “Pity.”

“Get ya some in a second,” Mike promised.

He’d get something to clean up with—and probably clean Peter up with it too. _He takes such care of me._ A pang shooting through him, Peter rested a hand on Mike’s knee. He wondered what Mike was thinking about—the suddenly distant look in his eye was suddenly hard to read. Regret? _Not about this_ , Peter thought, hard enough for Mike to detect and react to. And he did: he snapped back to being present. Something about the baby, Peter caught. _Mary Beth that was, Honey that is._

“So…I guess it’s back to square one, in finding her mom? Not you and Kat,” he said. _Not you._

“No…”

“What.” At the tone of Michael’s voice, at the angle of his bent head, Peter looked for his shirt. For anything. This—whatever it was—he wanted to face it clothed. “Tell me, Michael.”

“Kat liked to get it on with other chicks. Liked me to…watch.” Mike made an effort to look Peter in the face. “She reminded me that we had…a couple of threesomes.”

***

“Pete. _Peter!_ ” Mike stopped saying his name in louder and more imploring tones in favor of catching his wrist when Peter’s latest bustling around the pad was busying himself with his band uniform and boots. He waited for Peter to stop and face him. “Peter, sweetheart…can you tell me how feel about this?”

Mike using shrink speech had Peter sinking to sit on the couch, and after a second, Mike sat too. Peter appreciated Mike wasn’t merely laying a rhetorical, “ _You okay with this?_ ” on him, and owed him honesty in return. “How do I feel? Like I’m on my board out at Surfrider Beach.”

“That’s Malibu, yeah?” Mike’s face bore that trying to fathom expression Peter had noticed long months ago it wore in conversations with him.

“Uh-huh.” Mike waited for him to join the dots, so he did. “The waves there are fierce. You catch one, and it rocks you. You just about get your feet under you and then the undertow there? You get a second swell almost before the first flattens.”

“I get it. Peter, this…” Mike waved a hand around. _The sex, the keeping information back until after sex_ , Peter read. “Wasn’t planned.”

“Yep, despite the pad being packed with rubbers.” He caught Mike’s wince. “Sorry. That was a cheap shot.”

“It really was.” Mike gave a slow shake of his head. “I mean none of this was. Any more than any stuff ever is, here.”

Although this wasn’t really on a par with getting tangled up with a crooked scheme, or rescuing a damsel in distress. Was it? Peter didn’t know.

“C’mon. I’ll make you a tea while I get lunch together,” Mike coaxed.

It was a habit, Peter hopping up and sitting cross-legged on the counter next to him and snagging bits of salad or garnish while Mike threw a quick meal together, but the way Peter felt after the pounding Mike had given him earlier, he didn’t feel like sitting on the unforgiving cold stone. He lolled against it instead and reached around Mike to steal a section of tomato Mike sliced.

“So, we just gotta roll with the waves, huh?” Mike switchbacked to Peter’s simile and pretended to rap his light-fingered knuckles with the knife.

“And I’m glad Kat couldn’t make it tonight.” Peter added, harking back to Mike’s request for him to describe his feelings. “I know—I’m not worried that you…”

“Because you have nothing to worry about.” Mike repeated his mantra, an affirmation not designed for him, however, but more to inspire Peter to be his best self. He eyed Peter, assessing him, then gave a crooked grin. “Close your eyes?”

A hand over his closed eyes for good measure, Peter caught the _snick_ of scissors and the _scritch_ of an earthenware pot on the sill. Mike poured water from the kettle over the leaves he’d clipped from a plant on the windowsill and placed in a mug, and now wafted the mug under Peter’s nose. He inhaled.

“Lemon balm.” Peter opened his eyes, but looking at the sill to see which of the row of plants bore a new bare spot brought no confirmation: the _scritch_ noise had been caused by Mike turning the plant pot around to hide any recent pruning. Not that Peter needed more evidence than the scent. Mike nodded and set the mug down. He’d hand it over in five minutes’ time, thoroughly infused.

“So you think I need to lighten up? That herb improves mood,” he told Mike. “And it enhances cognitive function—we do need to figure stuff out, I guess.”

“Oh?”

Ah. He’d only known it promoted calmness and eased stress.

“Guess I should have some then,” Mike muttered, slicing cheese. “And about inviting Kat to the Box tonight, I couldn’t think of another way to get in touch with Ricki.”

Peter pressed his foot against Mike’s. “So, like, casual? Just asked her if she felt like calling her friend up? Not like you were _setting_ anything up?”

“ _Peter!_ ”

“And if they think that—”

“I’ll tell them the reality of the situation.” Mike put his knife down and reached to cup Peter’s face for a kiss. “Of this. Of you,” he whispered after. He sniggered. “You can open your eyes again now.”

When Peter did, meeting Mike’s half-smirk at the effect his prowess had on Peter, Mike held his gaze. “Tell them about _us_ ,” he said.

Peter let that settle, as warm and golden as a sunbeam, over them.

“But she hasn’t been in touch with her…since,” Mike warned, starting on the green onions that needed using up. “And she never had her number. It was casual. We’d just bump into her in clubs or bars.”

 _Or go to a club or bar where you’d bump into her._ “At least we have the excuse of getting people to the Duke Box,” Peter mused.

“I could’ve done without it though,” Mike replied.

***

Just like he could have done without the jibes and jabbing between Micky and Davy when they came in for lunch, over who’d gotten the most phone numbers from smitten love-heart-eyed chicks eager to help them with their “roommate’s baby”.

“Yeah? Let’s see how many of ’em’ll be as keen to be a stepmom to her.” Mike gave Davy a cool look.

“Stepm…” Davy sat, keeping the baby in the corner of his eye as if she were a wild animal.

Could Davy be the father? _He’s the most likely_ , Mike insisted to himself. Even if the baby didn’t have Davy’s round face or big round eyes. She had his big forehead, hers more easily seen, not being covered by bangs. Although that was perhaps because in babies, you could really see that the eyes were halfway down the head. But hers were deeper set? More intelligent looking? Definitely a lighter brown. “ _Honey?_ ” he queried, taking her, hoping they hadn’t let her get too sunkissed. “We’ll get confused. I call Peter honey.”

“Better stick to calling him studmuffin from now on then,” Micky quipped from where he was still counting slips of paper as avidly as a local official did election ballot papers. “Where is the studly one?”

“ _Pete_ ’s gone to finagle bottles and clothes from Mrs. P. We can’t ask her outright in case it gets back to Babbitt.”

Honey blew a spit bubble at the name of their landlord. _Clever girl._ She had an easiness to her, not like Henry’s ‘puddingness’ as Davy called his impassivity, but more like she was into what was going on around her, the bustle and noise. He joggled her on his hip, noting again her long fingers and ready smile.

“Got a plan then, oh soppy one?” Davy nudged him.

“Yeah, ’s’a matter of fact. Micky, stop shuffling bits of paper from Davy’s pile into yours. You’re good with the inventions—she needs a bigger basket slash crib slash stroller that doesn’t look like one so we can fold it up or conceal it if Babbitt’s around. You know what he’s like.”

“Yeah.” Micky blew out a breath. “Remember how mad he got about that Human Potential Movement Be-In here that weekend?”

“That _what_?” came from Mike and Davy.

“Nothing. I’ve said too much,” Micky muttered.

“If,” Mike said after a pause, “I find out that you regularly hypnotize us to make us forget your madcap schemes—”

“Mad-der cap schemes,” Davy corrected.

 _Pick your battles_ , Peter would advise. This would keep. “So, skedaddle, Mick.” Mike pointed to the garage, Micky’s workshop and lab. “Oh and remember the three Ps.”

“No potions, no pyrotechnics, no propulsion. No problem,” Micky assured him, sweeping his lunch into a bag to take with him.

“And you…”

“ _Moi_?” Davy’s hand stopped reaching for his sandwich.

“You’re gonna call up as many of the chicks you saw in Toby’s photos as you can, and ask ’em all to the Duke Box tonight.”

“All his laydeeze together in the same room at once? He has _dreams_ like that!” reached them from an unseen Micky, outside on his way to the garage. His head bobbed up at the kitchen window for him to get another shot in. “Davy, it’s like your fantasy album cover come to life!”

“Yeah, well, good thing the Box is one of the larger clubs on the Strip,” Mike commented, a little sourly. “Wouldn’t wanna flout any fire codes, now would we?”


	11. Chapter Eleven

Mike regretted the idea as soon as they started rehearsing, and Davy sloped off after each song to make yet another phone call. “This rate, our phone bill’s gonna jump up and hit the gong,” he lamented.

Davy, taking up his tambourine again, just shrugged.

“And Micky, where— You do not need the john again, boy!” Mike cried, spinning to face the flash of curly hair he’d caught in his peripheral vision.

“But Davy just went in there,” came in a whine.

“And?” When Micky looked away rather than answer, Mike threw up his hands. “I don’t know what the hogs in heck you two got going on, but I kinda wish you’d just f—”

“Find his Little Black Book.” Peter, checking on Honey—again—pointed from Micky to Davy. “Micky’s mission in life in general, and today in particular, with Davy flashing it so much.”

“ _Know_ I’m gonna regret this, but, _huh_?” Mike asked.

“Every time Davy hides it after calling up one of his exes—to stop Micky getting it—Micky tries to find _where_ he hid it.”

“But…” Mike blinked, taking it in. “What’s he gonna do with it? Call up a chick, making out he’s Davy? What good would that do? Unless he’s gonna dress up as him, for the date?”

“I just wanna touch it! Wanna stroke it! Hold it!” Micky burst out.

“Like I say, I wish you two would get all this outta your systems and just f—”

“ _Forget That Girl_?” Peter, an after-sun-cream-smothered Honey on his knee, started the song’s electric piano riff. “What? We rehearsing or not, guys?”

“Ooh, you’ll pay for that, s—”

“Studmuffin,” Micky broke in to Mike, satisfaction at having gotten his own back filling out his normally squashed face. “Hey look, Honey’s trying to play piano!”

“Should try her on the drums next,” Davy suggested. “Let’s face it, if Micky can play ’em, how hard can it be?”

Mike happened to be nearest to the phone when it rang in between that song and the next, and answered it. “Oh, hi, Lola,” he greeted the DJ and office manager of the Duke Box, the club they were contracted to play in two nights a week, one of them being later that night. He shook his head when Micky, eyebrows raised, made an “ _Is that for me?_ ” motion of his hand for the receiver. Was the loon actually dating Lola? Mike…didn’t think so.

“Uh-huh…again? That’s a bummer,” he answered her. “Sure we do, and of course we can. Not a problem. Oh, and you know what? We could get there early, hang out with you, keep you calm? Our pleasure. Bye now.”

Peter eyed him. “I get that you want us there early to use the phone in her office…”

Mike acknowledged that with a dip of his head. Peter knew him and his economy-minding thinking well.

“But what does she want us to?”

“Same as she did on Tuesday, right?” Davy guessed.

“Yeah. Make sure we got enough material and that we can play a double set in case the Mad Hatters don’t show. Again. Or still. Or yet.” The grammar of is was beyond Mike, as was the notion of a group getting a paying gig as house band and not turning up. “Guess last night was a wash too.”

“Yeah, O’McNamara’s Irish Showband had to do a double set. Oh, one member of the Hatters turned up…and came on and performed with them.” Micky winced at the thought.

Mike was glad he hadn’t witnessed _that_ fusion.

“Who would thought it, a group called the Mad Hatters being unreliable?” Davy shook his head. “To the point they make the Warm Embrace look like the Pelicans?”

“Hey!” called Peter, frowning at the slight. He had a soft spot for that group, Mike knew…and had wondered if it had to do with any the members. That blond, Logan, he thought—

“Nah. Debra, their publicist, if anyone,” Micky muttered. “Tiny, brunette…”

“ _Micky!_ Would ya just keep outta—” Mike subsided when Peter looked over at them. “Nothing. Just, yeah, their sunshine pop is a bit…one note. Samey.”

“How can you can say that!” Micky placed a hand on his heart, wounded. “Why, their last single _Sun, Surf, and Fun_ —”

“With its B side _Sea, Sand, and You_ ,” Davy added.

“Is very different to their one before, _Cool Waves and Hot Chicks_!”

“B side, “ _Let’s Hit the Beach, Babe_.” Davy smirked.

“Okay.” Peter stood. “I liked their first album, _Summer is for Surfin’_.”

“But what about their follow-up, _Waxed_ _Boards and Loose Broads_?” Micky deadpanned.

“Total wipeout, if you ask me,” Davy quipped.

“Enough!” Mike declared. “We better start getting things together, getting ready.” Casing his guitar, he pondered the situation at the Duke Box. “I guess Lola’s trying to make the place competitive, hiring all these new, far-out groups, like at the Whiskey or the Troubadour, right?” Not her fault they were all wild.

“Yeah. Not like she’s doing it on purpose, trying to ruin the place for revenge against…anyone.”

They all stared at Micky, who looked up from unscrewing his cymbals. “What?” he asked. “Oh, the new bar manager starts there tonight. Bar and talent manager.”

“What’s happened to Jo Ann?” Mike asked. The bar at least was the leggy blonde’s responsibility.

“Away. Shooting a movie in Europe. Lucky her, right?”

“She’ll be back before too long, then,” Davy surmised.

“Yeah, so this Richard, or Mr. Richards, guy is filling in.” Micky took up his timp mallets and beat out a rumble on his kettledrum. He said he was working it into a song he was writing, but Davy reckoned Micky used it as a workout for his arms, his bicep.

“Bicep _s_ ,” Peter had corrected. “Plural.”

“Not quite yet,” Davy had jibed. “I’d say getting there, but…”

“It’s good she’s okay with noise.” Mike wanted to cover his ears, but Honey, on her back on the rug, was kicking and waving to the thudding crescendo.

“She is.” Peter smiled at her “Na na!” when he bent over her. “She likes watching people bustle about. They said she was grooving on all the radio music and movement down on the beach.”

“That’s good, because we got no choice but to take her to the Duke Box with us.” Mike closed his instrument case with a snap.

***

“I get it, why you want all the possible chicks here.” Micky nodded as they unloaded their instruments in the club parking lot a little later. “Like the gathering the suspects together scene in a detective story! Only, I’m not sure this place is gonna be big enough for Davy’s exes…” He clicked his fingers. “Pity we’re not playing the Hollywood Bowl.”

“Well, never mind the Duke Box, we could use a _phone_ box for yours,” Davy told Micky.

“You been working on that comeback for a while there, l’il biscuit?” Mike had to ask.

“More or less the whole drive here,” Davy admitted, smoothing his hair down.

“Worth it.” Peter patted him on the shoulder. He stopped and looked up. “What’s happening up there, on the roof?”

The Hatters were happening, they found out once they got inside. They were up there, their giving interviews on the club’s roof having turned into an impromptu performance.

“Maybe a free concert will bring people to the actual gig, later?” Mike tried to tell Lola. Gig…if the art rock, or rock-as-art or art-as-rock, or whatever the hell they were quintet _did_ perform later, as they were supposed to. “Is this mess…all theirs?”

Lola nodded a weary uh-huh. “It’s a spontaneous contemporary sculpture,” she informed Mike, dismantling the chairs and tables from wobbly the towers they’d been piled into.

“And all the…confetti and…grass clippings?” Mike stuck a finger into the largest heaps of the mess strewn about the floor and bar.

“A performance art concept. To go with their sound collage.” Rolling her eyes, Lola dragged the vacuum cleaner over.

“We’ll help, won’t we, guys? _Guys_?” Mike glared in the direction of the dressing room, where three Monkees had made themselves scarce. Okay, Peter had an excuse: Honey had seemed unsettled on the journey and he wanted to soothe her, but that lazy pair… And they could start taking more of a turn with the baby, too. Not fair Peter doing it all. _Not fair to me. Not as if we’re like an old, settled couple. We’re still in the honeymoon phase and so—_

Mike squashed all that down, relieving his feelings by swiping all the sticky chocolate and raspberry sauce from the bar counter with hard, savage jerks of the wet rag Leah handed him, uncaring that he was destroying an artwork, much less a surrealistic painting set to music. “Who booked these goddamn clowns?” he ground out.

“That would be me?” came a voice from behind him, one he recognized at once, although he’d only heard it a few times, and well over a year ago. And then she’d been mostly moaning, as Kat aroused her, then half-screaming, when he screwed her. Finally given permission to take her, when Kat had judged her ready, he’d fucked her hard, to find her tighter than he’d expected, just as she’d found him bigger than she was used to.

Hence the screams, although he’d also wrung guttural groans from her when he’d finally bottomed out and she’d throbbed tight around his cock for long seconds, her body adjusting to his size, and high-pitched cries, when she’d come, hard, thrashing her head on the pillow and scoring her nails down his back.

“ _Ricki?_ ” Mike turned. “Ah, not Richard or Mr. Richards.”

“Or even Richie or Ricky. With a y.” She twisted one side of her pretty mouth into the sardonic expression he remembered her small face wearing, her quick riposte telling him she must get that mistake a lot. “Well well, Nesmith! We meet again.” She grinned. “Hearing all about you, up and down the Strip—I’m at the Brew now, down the other end. Well, here, now.”

So she _was_ filling in for Jo Ann. Yeah, she’d been something to do with the running of that bar they’d tended to meet her in. “Sight for sore eyes, Miss Ricki,” he told her, gesturing at her.

Her dark blonde hair—very similar to Honey’s—was still worn in a side part and pulled to one side of her head, although tied in a loose braid at the moment, and still a striking contrast with her darker brows. The gleam in her green eyes was the same, as was the sidelong look she shot from a lowered, half-turned head through thick dark lashes. Kat had called it a ‘naughty look’, and Mike knew what she meant, especially now when Ricki’s lips twisted a little more. She stretched up to kiss his cheek before he could lay his good ol’ boy charm on any thicker and kiss her hand, or something equally fake-Southern.

“Talking of sights, saw you here last month,” she told him.

“And y’all didn’t say hi?”

She turned her head away a fraction farther and lowered it a little more, to peek from the corners of her eyes now. “Want me…to?” she asked, letting the pause and tone do the work. She leaned over the bar to the carafe of coffee and filled a polystyrene cup.

“I’m—”

“—with someone. And it’s meaningful. Written all over you.” She held her cup up to him in cheers. “Oh, don’t worry.”

“I ain’t.”

“I mean I won’t say anything.”

“I mean I ain’t worried.”

“Nesmith…you’re one fucking cool _hombre_.” Giving a slow head shake and exhalation, Ricki stretched again to pour him a coffee and pass it to him. She knocked hers against it in a silent toast.

“Am I interrupting?” Lola, walking up, looked from one to the other.

“Nah. Was about to tell Nesmith— Oh. Can’t remember your name?”

“Michael. Mike.” He laughed. He’d almost forgotten he was supposed to be investigating if Ricki was the baby’s mother, but seeing her here, now, the way she looked at him, talked to him? She _so_ wasn’t. He laughed louder. Relief? Maybe. But it was good to see her again. “Go on?” he invited her, downing his coffee in one big gulp and dropping his cup in the trash.

“You been here a while now as a house band. You’re popular, got a local following, and always got fresh material… Lola thinks you could play a third night a week too?”

“Hell yeah!” Mike whooped. He caught the tiny Lola up in a huge hug. She laughed, then tapped him to release her, and pointed to the soaking wet and shivering journalist shaking water from his tape recorder, who she had to go and help.

Embers of joy ignited in Mike, sudden hot sparks flaring. Things were looking up! Three guaranteed gigs a week and that would still leave space for finding other work. They could ditch With a Twist and its teenyboppers! Invite contacts from record companies down… He was only half-listening to Ricki’s plans to close Sundays instead of Mondays, to find another strong local group for the other three nights—they’d had some lousy ones—and maybe Mike could suggest one and…

“As long as it’s another group with a proven track record of being able to play a double set!” Lola called over.

“As in, go on again, if the main act can’t,” Mike translated. Reality crashed in on him and he squared up to Ricki. “This ain’t…contingent on anything?”

“Well, yeah.” A lock of her hair had come loose and she peeked through it. “On you being good…at what you do.”

Her words, as well as her nibbling on her thumb while giving him the corners-of-the-eyes ‘look’ were designed to have him spinning. He didn’t move, however.

“So, still not worried?” Ricki smirked.

“Nope. What I am is faithful, though,” he replied.

It was her turn to laugh, and she did, almost spilling what was left of her coffee. Mike took the cup from her to replace on the bar. Ricki slapped his arm. “ _Mr. Fucking Cool_. Jeez. Rest of the band, they like you?”

“Come see.” He couldn’t not smile too. He didn’t know her well but felt she was basically okay. “Guys?” he called seconds later, knocking on the dressing room door. “Someone to meet you…you all decent?”

“Can’t be Jo Ann then,” came Micky’s voice.

“She barges in?” Ricki asked.

“Brings drinks though,” Davy said from within.

“And sometimes her camera.” Mike opened the door, blinking at the mess. The other three had made a half-hearted attempt to clear some space in the middle of the props and trunks and rack of costumes that must belong to the Hatters. “This is Ricki, temporary bar manager and future entertainment manager with great ideas about how to make this place even better. Say hi, guys.”

“ _This is_ Ricki,” he repeated, emphatically, his eyes on Peter…Peter whose shirt was open on his bare chest, his wet-from-the-shower chest. Honey, in his arms, looked damp too and Mike put that together with her grumbling during the car ride and guessed she’d hurled on him.

“Oh, you got a baby!” Ricki cooed, advancing on Peter. “Aww. How old’s your little girl?”

“My…” Peter stepped back.

“Yeah—looks just like you. Got that open Nordic look.” Ricki smoothed a finger over Honey’s combed-back hair.

“She…does,” said Micky slowly, pointing. “Look.”

Peter spun around to the mirror and held Honey up to it. His wet hair was slicked back, like hers…and the color was the same. His hair off his forehead made his eyes look deeper set than usual and longer, and though the baby’s were slightly more topaz, the shape and angle were the same.

“Even got her daddy’s freckles and his tippy-up nose,” Ricki added.

 _And his long fingers._ Mike swallowed.

“And, well…his _ears_.” Davy’s comment came in a hushed voice—Mike loved them, thought them cute, but Peter was a little sensitive about them. Would Honey be…seeing hers were the same?

“ _Ricki!_ ” came in a strained shout from outside and, flashing a peace sign, she left, but no one paid any attention. Their eyes were on the two figures still staring into the mirror: the adult and the miniature female version of him.

“Peter?” Mike whispered. But Peter stood, silent and unmoving.


	12. Chapter Twelve

“ _Darlin’…_ ” Mike couldn’t think how to finish his sentence. All he could do was put out a hand and stroke down Peter’s upper arm where it was still inflected, the muscles bunched, because it continued to hold the baby up to the mirror. Where Peter stood like a statue, she kicked and grabbed, perhaps to get the other girl she saw just in front of her.

Mike tried to catch Peter’s eye, where it was reflected in the mirror, but Peter stared unseeing, and Mike instead studied their features. He was angry at himself that he’d been so fixated on trying to see Davy’s likeness in the baby—and yeah, okay, find nothing of himself—that he hadn’t thought to seek out traces of Peter. He bit down on the hard laugh trying to escape at that. You didn’t have to search hard to see Peter in the fair-headed, honey-skinned girl with her elongated, deep-set brown eyes, her ready smile and her lively, curious nature. Her long fingers, the way she freckled in the sun, her love of music…

And Peter had bonded with her, right away, like the recognition principle Mike had learned about, or the theory he’d made up—he had no idea which it was. _No!_ He had to glance around to make sure he hadn’t said that fervent declaration out loud. But no. He took a breath in, fighting all this, as he’d battled that easy acceptance and sense of inevitability that had stolen over them from the first. Well, from the first moment he and Peter had been together with the baby, taking her with them to Barney’s and on the beach…as if she’d always been there.

“No.” She hadn’t and…shouldn’t.

“No?” Micky echoed. So he’d said the second denial out loud.

“It’s impossible. Right?” Mike didn’t know if he was telling or asking. “Peter said he hadn’t had sex, in the time in question.”

“With Janey or Elizabeth. He said he hadn’t with Janey or Elizabeth,” Micky answered, almost whispering, perhaps feeling weird that he was replying for Peter, or talking about him when he was right there…right there and still doing his statue act.

“They’re not the only birds in the world.” Davy’s accent and cadence made it sound like a line from a song, as if he were about to don a straw boater and twirl a cane, do a shuffle. And if he did— “Or even in LA,” he added, catching Mike’s eye.

“Like those Blossom chicks?” Micky whispered, before Mike could jump in, demand that if Davy knew something, he’d better fucking say it—in plain, non-Limey English. “You used to, well, ‘see’ them off and on, right, Pete? ‘See’ them until last year?”

At any other time, Micky’s attempt at delicacy, at gallantry, perhaps, would have brought a smile to Mike’s face. Not now. Now fucking now.

“Don’t you think the baby would be darker, if that were the case?” he scorned. In the silence that followed, it became clear that neither he, Micky or Davy knew enough about genetics to assert that. Maybe Peter did, but… He tried to remember dates, places, but even the recent past was a fog. “You been in contact with them, her, since, right?”

“He was.” Micky nodded for Peter.

“And they would’ve told him. Involved him,” Davy added. “Here, Peter, sit down. Take a load off.” Peter didn’t move, making Davy shrug. “Get him some water, seeing as we can’t make a pot of tea?” He pointed from Micky to the jug and beakers. “Let me handle this, lads.” He cracked his knuckles. “Now listen, Pete. We’re not saying she’s yours, all right?”

“ _We’re not?_ ” Micky mouthed.

“No. We’re saying there’s a strong family resemblance.” And Davy bestowed the broadest, smuggest no-chores-for-me-for-at- _least_ -a-week-right? grin on Mike. And Mike could have hugged him, swept the littlest biscuit up in a movie-star embrace, because he thought— _was convinced_ —he saw Peter relax a little.

“That’s right!” Micky sounded as relieved as Mike felt. “His brother, Nick, right? He’s still at college, so if anything like this happened… And there’s two more of them, teens, or at most twenty!”

“Who all look similar, in Peter’s photos. Real strong family likeness.” Davy’s look was triumphant.

Mike wanted to believe, he so did, and that was what made this so unfair, but… “I don’t reckon.” He shook his head. “You’re close to them, right, Pete? Not geographically”—which made this more unlikely—“so they would have come to see you. Seen us. Asked you, not just dropped her off, like, well…”

“Like something beneath him.” It wasn’t so much Peter’s words, after his long silence, as the dark tone he said them in that had Honey squawking and them all jumping.

“Beneath who?” Micky was back to whispering.

“My father,” Peter answered, finally turning from the mirror, to range his gaze over the three of them.

“ _Your—_ ”

But there was no time for even one question, because the door banged open and a circus trooped in. Or at least that was what it felt like, with the five-strong group more performers than musicians, and their chaos and clatter making the place into a big top. Shouldn’t the big top be out on stage? Mike guessed that was a bigger top, then. And the roof a medium top? His head spun with the manic energy bouncing around the small room.

Was he getting old, getting square, that he was steeling himself, expecting five freaks? They weren’t that whacked-out, even though he was still shaking his head that they’d all changed their surname legally to Hatter. And the Monkees were causing more hubbub...well, not them so much as the hordes of young, identikit chicks arriving in waves and packing the place in response to all the phone calls made that day.

“No wonder that little Casanova never has time or energy for chores.” Mike whistled, and gave up trying to count the girls. “If he dated all of these in that short time period?”

“Maybe he goes on double dates. As in, two chicks at the same time. And I mean exactly the same time: same date,” Lola threw in, in passing.

“What, like one on each arm? Or…both in the same place on the same evening, and he’s running back and forth?” Micky asked, his eyes wide.

“Why d’you think I wear out me shoes quicker than you do?” Davy inquired, overhearing. “It’s not _just_ ’cause me brain’s heavier than yours.”

The excited, happy buzz zapping around the club couldn’t last, of course, and things soon took a turn for the worse once the chicks all got to talking to one another. They divided into two camps, half thinking Davy wanted to pick up where he’d left off…and the other half wanting closure. It was hard to say which half was noisier. And as the evening heated up, that wasn’t all Mike was curious about—

“Here.” He crouched down in the corner of the dressing room where Davy, after venturing out onto the dancefloor, was hiding, and passed him a second bag filled with ice for the other side of his face. “I gotta ask. Who packs the biggest punch, Clarisse or Joyce?”

“Plead the Fifth, man!” called Joey Hatter.

“No, plead amnesia!” suggested Johnny Hatter, as the pair had been doing for a while, and probably did a lot.

Micky, as might have been expected, was entranced by the eccentric theatrical quintet. “You guys are the groovius maximus! And all your looks start with the hat?” he asked, peeking in their trunks.

“So what are they tonight?” Mike muttered, eyeing the swirl of top hats with wide black crepe hatbands that were long enough to hang down the backs of the guys’ necks like veils; the dark, mid-calf frock coats, the shiny black spats. “In deep Victorian mourning?”

Davy removed his hands and two plastic bags of ice to shake his head. “Edwardian. You can tell by the straighter cuts of the clothes and the closer fit to the body. Fashion had more of a European influence under Edward than Victoria.”

“ _Dav—_ ”

“And it’s half-mourning.”

“ _—vy?_ ”

“You had your first mourning, second mourning, ordinary mourning, and so this half-mourning was the transition before normal clothes,” Davy continued, over Mike’s and Micky’s amazed attempts at interjecting. “Here, all black’s replaced by colors like gray, lavender and mauve, see?”

He looked as startled as they all did at hearing these pronouncements coming from his mouth.

“Who are you?” Micky and Mike asked, together, bewildered.

“I-I don’t know! Who am I?” echoed Davy, confused.

“Guess we’ll find out during the set. C’mon.” Mike chivvied them all out into the club proper and the stage. “Peter!” he called, beckoning him over when he caught sight of him, returning from checking on the baby in her new nursery of the Duke Box’s office. “What? She still not right?”

“No. She had too much sun today.” Peter glared at Micky and Davy, babysitters at large.

“Now, you understand you’re not really mad at _us_ , don’t you? You’re zapped at _yourself_ for entrusting her to us,” Micky observed, twirling a drumstick in either hand.

“And mad at you,” Peter replied.

“Because—”

“Not now,” Mike begged, indicating the audience and wondering why Mick’s stubbornness had kicked in yesterday and his college psych classes today. Oh, Jesus, it didn’t mean he’d suddenly turned into an adult, did it? Whatever, newfound adulthood or not, Mike hoped it meant Micky could still play drums.

He could, but it wasn’t their best set ever and _I Wanna Be Free_ wasn’t their only song without a bass in it that night, the way Peter wriggled away to check in on the office and its occupant every chance he got. Every chance he _made_ , Mike corrected himself, reminded of Kat’s words. Peter jumped off the stage again after their last song while the applause and cries for more were still ringing. _Damn._ Mike didn’t want them to look aloof, uncaring of their audience. He’d wanted it to go as well as possible tonight.

“Wasn’t all bad,” Davy started to say, but Mike followed Peter’s example and made a swift temporary exit to where the new Duke Box employee, more of her thick dark-blonde hair escaping its braid, was standing chatting to a bunch of customers.

“Hey, Ricki.” Mike caught her arm before she could go see to something else. “Tonight…well, we’re usually good and tight. Tighter than that and—”

“You choose that word on purpose, Nesmith?” Ricki inquired, cutting him off.

“What?” The adjective registered, belatedly, pushing him back to that first night when he’d— “ _Shit_ , Ricki, I wasn’t… Wouldn’t,” he finished. _Embarrass you, invoke that…_

He caught the gleam in her eye and felt a little reassured, more so when she said, “I’m gonna stop messing with you now, Nesmith. You do know I was messing, before, right? But ending it now, as we’re co-workers from here in, and believe it or not, I’m professional about my work.”

He did believe that, just as he felt she’d been more _testing_ , than messing. Seemed that was something she did. “I believe you’ll do a good job here,” he answered, as cool as she’d called him.

“Oh, I know I will. Just make sure you do.” She raised a finger at him, and he nodded. She chuckled. “And be thankful I’m not Kat. She would’ve slapped your ass.”

True. She had. Ricki’s too, he thought.

“What’s she into now?” Ricki asked. “I wondered the other day what phase she’d be in, after…the last one? Women’s Lib? Peace Corps?”

So she was perceptive too. “South America,” he admitted, and heard her chuckle before she slipped past him, at a respectful distance, not pressing against him as Jo Ann used to do. He…kinda missed it. He hurried back to the stage for their encore…that they couldn’t do without Pete. And they couldn’t wait for him.

“No, especially seeing as he’s gone,” Davy told him. “He rushed home.”

“What? Not because of, well, Ricki and—” He hadn’t been coming on to her, but could it have looked— He’d had to explain it to the others, thinking it best, if they’d all be working together.

Micky pulled the same face he had when Mike had filled them in, and shook his head slowly, his sigh ruffling his curls.

“What, like you’ve never had a threesome?” Davy smirked.

“Sort of. It…” Micky gave up his attempt at self-defense. “No, Mike, he went home right away, because of Honey.”

“I got a feeling that’s not her name now.” Mike looked out at the audience, trying to gauge if the wave of hostility he was convinced he felt was to do with them or still the same vibe Davy’s de-facto harem of exes had been giving off all night. “Well, no encore, then.”

“Don’t need to.” Micky slid behind his kit and gave a crazed drum roll.

“Wh—” Mike started to ask, regretting it as soon as the syllable left his lips.

“What what?” And now Davy was defensive. “We had to do something—they’d’ve ripped me to bloody pieces, man!”

“And so, we’ve reached _that_ part of the evening…your last chance to buy tickets from any of the lovely hostesses…” Micky announced, in his best emcee voice. “Who are stationed there, there and there…” And he’d turned into an air hostess. Ricki was laughing as she took a few last bills from a few chicks and handed them squares of paper. Mike wondered how much they’d made the Box with this. Whatever _this_ was. Enough to make the management friendly to them, at any rate.

“It’s time…” This time Micky’s drum roll used his entire kit, including that damn kettledrum. “Time to pick the winner of the raffle for Mr. Dav-id Tho-mas _Jonesssss_!” he screamed.

“Micky…” Mike analyzed his words. “You did say it was a date with Davy and not… _actually_ Davy?”

“No he bloody didn’t!” Davy looked scared, more so when Micky called out the number he picked from an Indian headdress—Mike was sick of hats – and…a bespectacled, middle-aged guy stood up and waved a small slip of paper. He looked familiar…

“And the winner is Lester Crabtree and the Three Crabs!” yelled Micky.

“They win everything,” sniffed a chick pressed against the stage.

Mike agreed. “Well, have a good life with Lester Crabtree, babe,” he said to Davy as the guy approached, his jacket torn from him on his journey.

“I dunno about this…” Davy was clearly debating cutting and running.

“ _Plead amnesia!_ ” called a stoned-sounding voice from the wings.

“I hope it’s for his daughter, man,” Davy breathed.

“Guess you’ll find out,” Mike replied, fighting a grin. “I gotto go, guys. I’ll take the instruments. You can get a ride with someone, or catch a cab?”

“Or a crab,” Davy muttered, shaking hands with his new owner.

“Isn’t it crab _s_ , plural?” Micky asked in a stage-whisper.

“I was using a rowing analogy, ignoramus, not a sexual disease one.”

Which, Mike decided, was a great note to leave on.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“ _Shhh._ ”

Of all the greetings in all the bedrooms of all the world, why’d it have to be in mine? Mike debated saying it out loud but couldn’t muster enough energy to make it sound light. Bringing in the instruments and taking a shower had used up what he had left. He settled for a bland, “I didn’t say anything.”

“I mean be quiet in general,” Peter whispered from where he was lying on the bed with …the baby.

“So.” Placing his glass of milk on the nightstand, Mike perched on the edge of the mattress, making Peter roll onto his side and inch away a little, taking the bed’s other occupant with him to give them both room. The bedside lamp being angled away lit them in a muted glow. “Ya got a sister. Finally. Like Davy and Mick, huh? Makes me the odd man out now.” He tried not to think that was true. “You call your parents?”

“My…” Peter blinked up at him, bewildered.

“When you were in the office at the Box.” _You spent enough time in there._

Peter’s forehead crinkled more. “Why would I call my _parents_?”

Mike turned away to squash down the vision he’d been indulging in of Peter’s parents, laughing, dancing, drinking cocktails around the piano as they sang and played—okay, that was his usual image of Micky’s showbiz parents. But he’d wanted, _really_ wanted, Peter’s mom and dad to be too busy laughing and dancing and cocktail-drinking to tell Peter they’d had another baby until they’d decided to leave her with her big brother while they skipped off on an impulsive last-minute laughing, dancing and cocktail-drinking vacation and…reclaimed their daughter after.

Smashing that picture to bits and scrabbling to put the pieces together anew gave him…Peter had a _half_ -sister. “Ah. Your dad…”

“That’s why the typed note—he’s always typing. Letters to me—such as they are—even notes at home. At Christmas—all celebrations—he makes out a timetable and fucking laminates it.” It burst from Peter as jagged as the shards of glass from a blown-out window.

Mike let them smither to dust in the near-silent bedroom, let the soft music on the radio and the baby’s snuffles fill the void. “Who, do you know?” He indicated the baby and stroked her soft blonde hair. “Affair with a student, you reckon?”

“The full midlife crisis cliché?” Peter sighed. “No. He’s too much of a snob for that. Maybe an assistant professor, or possibly a postdoctoral researcher. Nothing lower than that, I wouldn’t imagine.”

“That’s a little—” Mike wouldn’t censure Peter for being harsh. He had a right to his feelings. “Call _him_ , then?

“And risk Mother finding out?”

He had a right to his angry tone, too. Mike pondered Peter’s words, processing them as quickly as he could, not squirrelling them away. Shouldn’t his mother know? Not just about the baby but about her husband stepping out on her? Maybe she did, didn’t mind, but this? And what if he upped and left her, and there were still two kids at home? Mike’s mom had been devastated to be abandoned with infant Mike, for all her fights with his father.

“Top drawer.”

“Huh?” Mike put out a hand to smooth Peter’s bangs off his face.

“You’re drinking milk, and now you’re rubbing your stomach—the antacid tablets are in the top drawer.”

Muttering, “Thanks, Doc,” Mike fished around and squeeze-scratched the top one free of the opened roll. “You got this pack when you picked up groceries last month,” he remembered. Peter never ate the things—like candy, as the slogan went, or otherwise. He’d gotten them for Mike. He took care of him. Of people. He’d had practice, being a big brother. But _to_ brothers. Would it be different, being a brother to a sister? And taking care of a sibling 24/7? He’d probably never had to do that for his brothers.

Mike wished there was something he could take to stop his head bubbling and burning as it tried to mentally digest, too. Oh wait, there was. _Therapy._ At least that small joke made him smile. “Nothing,” he told Peter. “And don’t dare say you’re sorry. You didn’t cause this.” He placed Peter’s hand on his stomach, to make his meaning plain. “This isn’t your fault.” _Not the colicky baby, not my stress-related colic…_ Although the link between the two _was_ maybe something he should explore in therapy.

He slid to lie on his side, facing Peter, the baby in between them. She opened her eyes, their gleam amber in the low light, and stared at him, almost making him jump, then closed them in sleep again. “So you can’t call home, Call your dad at work?” Mike suggested. “Oh, summer, so he’s not teaching? But…”

“We don’t have that sort of relationship.”

“But he left the baby with you!” Mike protested.

Peter sighed. “Maybe this will illustrate what I mean. Picture me about eight, I think? I’m reading the newspaper and there’s a word I don’t know. I spell it out for him and ask him what it means. ‘Adversarial?’ he replies. ‘Why, like our relationship, Peter.’”

“Ah.” Mike fell back on that useful syllable. “But I can’t help wondering if your ma needs to know, babe. You don’t like secrets.” _Being kept from you._ He kept a good few, though.

Peter half sat, to stretch and drink a mouthful of milk from the glass. “I’m just sick that he’s made me complicit in this. No, made me the villain! I can either keep this secret, when he knows I don’t like information being withheld from people, or I can tell Mother and hurt her, if she doesn’t know he has affairs.”

They were on the same page, as always. But there was more— “Sweetheart?” Mike prompted.

“This…” Peter stroked the baby’s tum. “Would destroy her. Mom always wanted a daughter.”

“It…” Mike struggled to put it into words. “It seems a little, I don’t know—”

“Baroque? Jacobean?”

“Victorian. Edwardian.” He could almost laugh at all the culture being bandied about, all around him. “Nothing. Just Davy, earlier… Elaborate. Twisted. If those five cent words you used mean that, then yeah.”

“You don’t know him.”

Mike didn’t think he’d want to, the contempt in Peter’s tone. “Maybe you don’t know him fully. Like, you see him in one way and he’s…” Peter’s glare had him giving up, shrugging in apology. “Could you call your brother, see what he knows, what he thinks?”

“Nick?” Peter nodded. “Yeah. I know where he’ll be tomorrow. And I can leave a message if I miss him.”

“Good.” Mike dropped a kiss on the top of Peter’s head. “I gotta turn in. I’m bushed.” He waited but Peter made no move to put the baby in her cradle. “Here.” He indicated Peter should move her over, and got settled enough to pull Peter to him, the baby in the middle. Such a little bitty thing…she looked smaller somehow. Maybe it was the old all in one she was dressed in. “Why d’you cut the feet off that suit she’s got on?” he asked.

“To make it fit.” Peter pulled at the lamp’s flex to unplug it.

“She better now? Honey?”

“I think so.” Peter’s yawn took over his face. “Seems okay, but I don’t really know what I’m doing. We none of us do. Hope.”

“I hope too. No?”

Peter was shaking his head. “That’s her name. Hope.”

Mike smiled. “Very hippie.”

“Maybe, but it’s also my mother’s middle name.”

“Ooh.” Mike winced at the low blow.

“What? You got anything against Hope?”

“Nope.”

Peter’s lip twitched in an almost-smile at the rhyme.

Sometime later, lying there sleepless, frustrated at Peter’s nearness and not being able to even cuddle him properly, let alone…anything more intimate, Mike pondered the name. Hope. Huh. Yeah, well, _he_ sure hoped Peter’s parents took her in, and sooner rather than later.

*******

“I’ve never been in this area before.” Micky, driving, took a look around.

“Well just bloody slow down.” Davy, miffed at being forced out of bed first thing in the morning, had been snippy for the entire twenty-odd mile drive from Santa Monica. “Still got whiplash from last night, I have.”

“I saved your life! I saved his life, guys!” Micky protested. Again. “If it hadn’t been for my brilliant idea on how to smuggle him out of there—”

“And I still say you could’ve got what’s her name to have stopped the car as soon as we were clear of the club—there was no need for me to be in the trunk the entire journey home!” Davy griped. Again. “Especially not shut up in a box, like a sodding ventriloquist’s d—”

“Don’t you say it!” Micky warned him.

One day they’d get to the bottom of his fear of such things, Mike reflected. What was it, paranoid about people being turned into them, or them coming alive or…who knew? “Okay?” he muttered to Peter, beside him in the back as the front seaters bickered, Micky telling Davy he should get used to it; when he was famous, he’d have to be smuggled around in the trunk of a car all the time and notice Micky had made no quips about the glove compartment and—

Peter gave a brief nod. “I’ve never been here before either,” he replied to Micky, directing him along another street. “It’s not quite Inglewood, not quite Compton…”

“If Peter thinks it’s important we all come, we’re all coming.” Mike cut Davy off before he could protest any more as they stationed the Jeep and looked for the door number. “And before you say anything, no, it ain’t a patch on Harley Street. What? That’s the expensive London street with all the fancy specialist doctors, ain’t it?

Muttering, “You been reading my _Tatler_?” Davy followed them into the clinic.

“Thanks, guys.” Peter’s smile made it all, even the stares they were attracting, worthwhile. “I don’t know how long Hope will be with us—”

“You couldn’t get hold of your family—your brother?” Micky corrected himself.

“Missed him, so couldn’t find out anything.” Peter looked along the corridor for the correct door—they didn’t want the free legal aid or employment assistance. “So until then, we have to do the best we can for her. We need pointers and she needs health checks, developmental checks…everything. Which means, this.”

“This Well Baby clinic.” Mike pushed open the door with the sign on it. Oh, the smell and the crying… Not the only thing distinguishing it from a rich-swank medical establishment—this was free. Well, cheap: they were making a contribution. When Peter had mentioned that a friend of his volunteered at a clinic, Mike had expected it to be at the HearSay, or that skills exchange place, not out here in this mostly black neighborhood.

“Who’s your friend, Peter?” Davy asked.

“A nurse.” Mike recognized the woman showing a couple something using a doll. He’d spent a little time with her two Decembers back when they’d been on the same mini tour as the group she played with. “It’s Beckie, right?”

“They all look alike to you?” a black guy asked.

“Nurses? A bit,” Mike admitted. “But I can tell Beckie apart—pediatric nurses have different uniforms.”

“Yeah, and all you skinny guitarists look the same to me,” Beckie called over. “Come on in. Don’t be shy now.”

“Or scared,” the guy added.

“I am a bit—all these babies,” Davy replied.

The guy laughed and, when Mike put all the bills they had to spare in the jar he held, took the five of them straight over to greet Beckie, at her paper-covered table. Seemed they’d jumped the line.

“No,” Davy muttered to Micky who hadn’t asked a question. Not verbally, although he was darting his gaze from Peter to Beckie and looked ready to burst. “The other two,” Davy whispered. “The two who share an apartment, where Peter used to crash. _With them._ ”

Micky’s moan of envy made a few people look up.

“Aww, poor Micky got colic too?” Beckie inquired. “I can give you some gripe water, settle it down? Or use him as the display model, in the practical demonstration, when I get done with the checkups and vaccinations?”

“He’d like that,” Davy told her, fighting his natural inclination to wink at the young women within range. It could have been the women’s small babies deterring him…or their big partners.

“Guys, cool it.” Peter turned to his ex-bandmate, from Blossom. “Becks, thanks for this. We, well, have an unexpected baby—”

“No judgment.” Beckie held up her hands, and looked from Peter to Hope. “Just congratulations, sweetie.” She turned professional, asking questions and taking Hope from Peter to weigh and measure her, recording the results on a chart she slotted into the cover of a small, thin bulletin-type book. She slipped Hope’s white dress and elasticated shorts off to examine her. They were the ones she’d arrived in—Peter must have laundered them.

Mike found he was waiting nervously, and wished he could hold Peter’s hand. But Peter was helping Beckie test the baby, holding out wooden blocks for her to grasp and repositioning her as directed.

“Huh.”

“What?” Peter questioned Beckie.

“You said she was six months old?”

“Well, he did.” Mike pointed at Davy. “Why?”

“Because she’s not sitting unsupported, and while she’s reaching for objects, she’s not swiping at them then pinching them. She also can’t roll from her back to her front.”

“She could be a little slow,” Micky whispered. “Sorry, Peter.”

“Hey—”

“Possible, but…” Beckie finished palpating Honey’s head. “The sphenoidal fontanelle isn’t closed, see?”

Mike stroked a ginger finger over the baby’s head, as they all did, and thought he might have felt a dip. Her face and the resulting smell said she’d filled her diaper. He nudged Davy to get another out of the bag and see to her—it was his turn. “What does that mean?” he asked. “Because, her size and everything…”

“Oh, she’s big and strong, and lively and curious…but not six months old. I’d say not even five. Four and a half at the most. Yeah, I’m going with four and a half.”

“But…”

“But…” Peter echoed Mike.

Was he doing calculations too? Because if Honey was four and a half months old, that meant—

“She was born at the end of March! Meaning conception was the end of June last year!” Micky squeaked.

“Probably a little before. Not right at the end of the month,” Beckie said. “Pregnancy’s usually… Oh!” Mike still reeling, Peter too, they stopped staring at each other to see where Beckie was looking.

She pointed down at where Davy was securing the diaper. It was the cloth one that had come with Honey, Mike saw. Peter must have laundered that too. “The roll method with two pins! You don’t see that method much here in the States. Takes me back…”

“But that’s how her diaper was on her originally.” Mike spoke slowly, pointing too. “Davy didn’t see it to copy it.”

“No, I didn't see it and I'm not copying. I did it like that because I don't know any other way—that's the way we do it in England,” Davy said, just as slowly.

“Yeah, and Europe, the nurse who I worked with and who did it like that said.” Beckie looked around the four of them, then back at the diaper. “You know, this isn’t cotton, but very fine linen. Like Belgian linen. Expensive and foreign, like her dress.”

“Wait.” Davy looked green. “Europe…”

“More precisely, one small kingdom in Europe,” Mike finished for him.

“Expensive baby stuff…”

“Yeah, linen fit for a _princess_.”

“And conception was late June last year…”

“Oh, not that late in June. I’d say the twenty-first. Midsummer. The Harmonica midsummer celebrations, in fact.” Mike stared hard at Davy.

“ _Bettina!_ ” Davy sank onto a chair. “I had—”

“Sex with her, at the masked revels evening,” Mike and Micky chorused, staring at him where he sat. Davy had told them that. A lot.

“Holy crumb!” yelped Micky. Then he frowned. “But Honey doesn’t look like you. Maybe a _bit_ like Bettina, the coloring and freckles? But really, she looks like—”

“Peter?” Mike reached for him. He’d paled. “It’s okay.” It was. It really was. Relief had him grinning, his movements expansive. “It was Davy—” _Oh._ Poor Peter must be in shock, what with going from one belief to another. “He wouldn’t stop going on about it, remember? That they sneaked away from the dancing, wandered down a back street to that inn, and… _Peter?_ ”

Peter swallowed to get his voice working. ““We have to talk,” he whispered…to Davy. “There’s…something you don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, any thoughts?! Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen!


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourselves - this is bonkers even by my standards. But, in my own defense - No. I got nothing.

“Here?” Micky grabbed at Peter as he went to lead them in. “No! I can’t— I mean, we shouldn’t go in _here_!”

“Micky, ain’t like we’ve never been here before, you included, so would you just can it?” Mike ordered. “And why’ve you put sunglasses on? You know it ain’t that bright inside.” Kid was whacked. They were all under stress, but Micky was whipping his head around and hyperventilating. But maybe he had a point about the location?

“Yeah, actually, Peter, when you said ‘not here, somewhere else’, I didn’t think…” Mike gave up on speech and just shook hands then waved instead. Shook hands with the bouncers on the door, both of whom clapped Micky the hardest on the shoulder and back, and waved hi to the chicks they knew inside…inside All Girls, All Day. Luce, currently performing on the wooden runway projecting down into the middle of the narrow club from the stage at its top, incorporated her wave into her shimmy, and Brandi, squealing as she teetered toward them, nearly brained them with her serving tray when she hugged them.

“Okay. Why are we here?” he had to ask Peter. They’d hung out some in the ‘club’ off Crescent in their early days, when they’d—very briefly—been the house band in exchange for accommodation, and had used the back room as a rehearsal studio, but of all the places— Wait. Girls. Currently dancers and hostesses, say, but who might possibly be—

His brain spinning in confusion, he put an unsteady hand on Peter’s arm as they made their way to their table, in the corner. “This hasn’t got anything to do with—”

“Our quest?” Micky butted in, pointing at the bassinet, over which Brandi was cooing, and beckoning Cinnamon to see.

Mike _hated_ that he examined their faces and features closely and narrowed his eyes at the baby, searching for similarities.

“What? No, of course not! We’re here because we…are going to need a drink,” Peter answered, raising his voice over the piped music. The club had soon abandoned the idea of live performances. Well, those involving musicians, anyhow. “More than one. Except for you, Micky.”

“Huh?” Micky stopped rubbing his shin where, unable to see in his dark glasses, he’d bashed into a table.

“Yeah. Someone’s got to stay sober and drive.”

“And that’s me because…”

“Apart from you being underage?” Mike butted in,

“Because _you_ won’t need a drink whereas Davy, Mike, and I will,” Peter finished.

Mike wondered if the order of their names was significant. What he did know was that this—whatever it was—was serious: Peter was building up to it, in his own way, in his own time. And if they needed the cushion of alcohol for this… Well, whatever Peter thought or decided, Mike would go along with. He stroked Peter’s knee under the table to tell him so.

“Huh.” That _huh_ was sulky, and Micky slumped in his chair, angling to see the clientele. “Girls’ afternoon,” he commented.

Right; Mike could see the majority of the audience was indeed girls, most of them drinking colored drinks with paper cocktail umbrellas in.

“Sweetcheeks? Rox? It’s not your day, is—”

They all spun around to see Crystal, who appeared to be speaking to Micky. Micky, who gave a sickly laugh and dropped his hand from the ‘cut’ gesture that had silenced Crystal mid-sentence. “Heh, no—I mean, yeah, been a difficult day, all right,” he answered, his nods thick and fast. He tried the green-sounding laugh again

“Oh, I gotcha. Four Roxie specials coming up…” Crystal vanished with a sequined-eyelash wink to reappear seconds later with a bottle of brandy and four long-stemmed saucer-type glasses in pride of place on her serving tray. The brandy wasn’t new—about a third had gone, but the four small green glass bottles ranged around it were intact, their turquoise labels pristine and their turquoise foil tops untouched—until Crystal slid a bottle opener from her suspender and flicked them off one by one in quick succession.

“Wait.” Mike tilted the brandy. “This isn’t ours…and who’s ‘Roxie’?” He pointed to the name written in thick black ink on the bottle’s label.

“Some tart who drinks brandy and Babycham,” Davy replied, pouring himself a tot of brandy and filling up the glass with the sparkling cider-pagne.

“It’s actually a real cocktail, a sophisticated drink…called a flying angel,” Micky muttered, taking a sniff of the brandy in lieu of the drink he wasn’t allowed and chasing it with a glug of Babycham straight from the bottle. “And I’m not a— She isn’t a tart.” He plucked the glacé cherry from its perch on the glass’s rim and popped it from its stick with his lips.

“Yeah you are.” Davy took a long pull of his drink and gagged. “Cheap one too. This isn’t even Napoleon brandy.”

 _Wait,_ Mike thought. _No._ He was wrong. Micky couldn’t…didn’t… _Here…_ Dressed as… _No._ _Way._ Impossible. Eschewing the fizzy cider drink, he took a slug of brandy. “Peter?” he asked weakly. “Could we please…?”

“Yes.” Peter took a huge mouthful of alcohol and gasped, closing his eyes and covering his mouth with the back of his hand. When he opened his eyes, they were watering. Mike passed him a cocktail napkin to wipe them. “Thanks. Davy…” he began, cut off when Davy laughed.

“Hey, Mick, remember when you told Deandra she was good enough to work here?” He slapped the table, chuckling.

“She is!” Micky protested. “Like I told her, she’s got it going on, in all the right places. She just needs to loosen up a bit.”

‘“Loose’ being the key word.”

“Hey.” Mike leaned across the table to Davy. “Quit trying to sidetrack.”

“Worth a shot,” Davy muttered, trying and abandoning his cute cheeky, wide-eyed shrug, then nibbling at his own cherry on a stick in a way that drew Micky’s eyes to him…and kept them there.

“So.” Peter nodded yes to Cinnamon that she could take Hope off backstage. “Tell us about the night of midsummer last year.”

“In my own words? Well, I was proceeding along in an orderly fashion…”

It was Mike’s turn for the “Huh?” this time.

“Well, he sounds like a judge addressing a rozzer! A cop,” Davy clarified. “I know you like your detective stories but—” Mike made sure Davy caught his eye. “Okay. I was a bit drunk…” He took another swig of the fizzy pale-gold drink as if in illustration, then picked at the small design on the saucer glass. A tiny cartoon deer wearing a scarf, same as his and the others, Mike saw.

“You were flirting with Licia, Bettina’s chief lady-in-waiting, all day.” Peter was getting impatient.

“And don’t you even think about saying you know what that lady was waiting for. Or any variation on it,” Mike warned Micky, who looked back at him, open-mouthed.

“I wasn’t! I didn’t even think of it. Damn!” Micky pushed the sparkling drink away, perhaps blaming it for his slowed thought and stalled puns. “Oh, it’s the _shades_!” he exclaimed, tugging his eyewear off.

“Oh yeah? What makes you say that, Peter?” The expression Davy wore was as truculent as the tone he used.

“For one thing, I saw you with her behind the curtain in that reception room where we got our honors,” Peter replied.

“Where it sounds like _she_ got _dis_ honored! And I’m back!” Micky thumped the table, making the glasses and bottles teeter.

“So ya went there as Bettina’s partner and flirted with another woman in front of her.” Mike sighed. He still wasn’t sure where all this was going, but suspected straight to his stomach, in the form of more acid bubbling to a boil. He doubted the brandy and fizzy drink were helping. Maybe he should see if the place had any milk. To add to the brandy, make a milk punch. Punch…when did he last drink that? He recalled the rocking of a boat—

“But keep your hair on. It was all right in the end,” Davy was alleging. “I was at the dancing with Bettina and after, we went off together and—”

“After what? When?” Peter demanded.

“The costume exchange bit. I made a smashing sheikh!”

“Sheikh? I thought you were a _ghost_ , all in white and staggering about!” Micky shook his head. “But I guess the weaving about was from the drink. You can’t hold it. Although at one point you _were_ holding it…in _both_ _hands_.”

“Stick to the drag act, Rox. Your comedy number’s going down like a lead balloon,” Davy critiqued.

“Guys!”

They all jumped when Peter slapped the palm of his hand down on the table. He rarely snapped and Mike hated the ragged snarl of energy around him, mainly because he knew how much Peter hated it. What was it Peter had to tell Davy—tell _them_ —that he was doing it in his ‘professor’ way, where he made you see the steps one by one until you made that last leap to the end point kind of by yourself? Mike had a feeling…he wouldn’t like the answer to that question.

“The costume exchange…” Peter took another mouthful of his drink, shuddering this time. “And what costume was Bettina wearing, after she changed from that historical dress one?”

“She was herself. Bettina! Long posh frock, sparkly jewellery, sash, gloves, hair in that teased-out puff style, oh and little carnival eye mask thing, like at a masked ball.” Davy sounded sure. He sat forward and dropped his voice a little. “Okay, yeah, I’d been coming on to Licia a bit, but I couldn’t find her, right, after the all-change bit, and Bettina was all over me like sunburn, so we had a bit of a slow dance and a snog…”

“Go on,” Micky urged, pouring more brandy into Davy’s glass. “Don’t leave _anything_ out.”

“Then went for a wander in the moonlight and came to that famous beer hall place, all made of wood, or something.” Davy took another sip. He liked nips of brandy, and whiskey, Mike recalled. Said they reminded him of Christmas. “It was all deserted, everyone at the midsummer dance. The door wasn’t locked. We went in. Couldn’t find the light switch. It was romantic.”

“It was _dark_ ,” Mike corrected.

“Same thing.” Micky waved a ‘go-on’ hand, rapt, even though he’d heard the story before. Many times. As had they all.

“We peeked inside the main bar bit, this big room, and just walked down the corridor to a little side toom. A private lounge. Big fireplace, roaring fire, and the firelight the only source of light. It was proper posh—all thick, heavy curtain and this chaise lounge, all plush, and furry pillows and cushions. Got us right in the mood. So we had a quickie.” He shrugged.

“Such pathos,” Mike mocked.

“Bathos, actually,” Peter said, then looked at Micky. “Oh, not chipping in with some ‘it wasn’t an anti-climax as much as a climax’ pun there?”

“ _Nooo_ , I’ll leave it, thanks,” Micky replied, obviously not knowing what _bathos_ meant.

There was silence for a minute, and Mike was quite glad for the music coming from the amps behind the stage, despite how wheezy and tinny it sounded. “Here.” He gestured to Scarlett to hand Hope over to him when she came back with her. Scarlett’s Stars-and-Stripes bikini worn with a khaki singlet over it for her Salute to our Heroes number belatedly made Mike realize they’d brought a tiny baby into a, well, _titty bar_.

 _Sorry, little one_ , he thought, settling her against his chest as she reached back for Peter with her usual “Na na.” Peter shifted in his seat, looking not at her but at Mike, and the emotions coalescing in that gaze made Mike gasp, because they _hurt_. Hurt like a scalpel, cutting him to the quick, debriding layers that had built up and Mike…tried not to see, wanted not to, wanted… _not this_. But he didn’t have that luxury. Not when Hope was there, and Peter was there and—

“Michael?” Peter’s voice seemed to come from a long way off.

“I…” _Can do this. Have to do this._ Had Peter caught that last part, above the bar’s music and the conversation and the movement? “Something I learned when I was there was that there was a fashion in costumes. More for women. And a popular one that year was the beer keller maiden uniform.” And it connected them. He looked from Davy to Micky, who stared him dead in the eye and didn’t blush. “And the princess outfit. A good few chicks had that princess costume.”

“A few did.” Peter nodded. “Licia did, Davy…but Bettina didn’t.” He’d said _Davy_ , but his eyes were still on Mike. “She had a—”

“A cat costume. One Licia had been wearing.” Mike tried not to breathe. Or maybe that was his lungs forgetting how.

“Licia’s ‘Bettina’ gown was authentic – a real silk dress and pearls. She’d worn Bettina’s clothes before. They sometimes did that, switched as princess and maid. Licia’s her dear friend. Her oldest friend. She’s been with her for ever.” Peter sounded as if he were quoting someone’s words, but Mike’s brain had bumped up against another echo. Who’d been speaking recently about switching places? He took another shot of brandy wine to help him think. It didn’t.

“So Bettina put the cat costume on…” Micky started.

“And added a hood with ears,” Mike recalled.

“Meaning _Licia_ was dressed as Bettina? That that wasn’t the _real_ Princess Bettina? Meaning Davy… _Davy_ …” Then Micky couldn’t speak for laughing.

He didn’t even stop when Davy elbowed him. Hard. “You seem to know a lot about it,” he snapped at Peter. “But you never said. Oh, you must have been having a right good laugh to yourself at my expense whenever I mentioned—”

“ _Boasted_. That you’d bagged a princess!” Micky chortled.

“I never said that. I said shagged!” Davy protested. “Well, why didn’t you, Peter? And hey, not my fault I was a bit tiddly and got the wrong chick.”

“It’s exactly your fault. You were coming on to Licia all damn day!! Mike protested, raising his voice over the jazzed-up version of a military march from the stage.

“You didn’t—”

“Tell her? Of course not, man!” Peter answered Davy, “You think I’d dime you out? I tried to cover for you—I told Bettina I betted you thought Licia was her.”

“ _What?_ ” Davy yelped.

“How’d she take _that_?” Micky queried.

“She didn’t find it very flattering.” Peter sounded surprised. “And said she just thought you’d moved on from her, seeing as you’d been paying marked attention to Licia ever since you arrived.”

“So, to even the score— _score_ being the operative word…”

“Hey!” Peter stood and stared down at Davy.

“ _Hey!_ ” echoed a voice and Skye was there, as tough as any bouncer. “You know the rules. Any fighting in this establishment takes place on stage and in a pool of Jell-O. Ask Roxie.”

“Sorry, Skye. And—” Micky made a beseeching finger-to-his-lips plea for silence. “But, Peter? You never said. Any of it,” he said.

“Huh. I should think he’s ashamed—”

“Or didn’t wanna out you as a liar, or upset you. So kept silent, thinking no one would ever need to know. Or maybe he couldn’t find a way to tell you you slept with someone by mistake. That’s pretty traumatic,” Mike ratted off at machine-gun speed, preventing Davy from finishing his sentence.

“Oh, he wouldn’t mind,” Micky assured him.

 _True, but…_ Mike let the silence settle. Davy seemed okay, so if the first part of this had gone okay, the second would be nothing too, right? What did they call that—magical thinking? Wishing magic? Micky caught his eye at that and gave a tiny _I’m sorry_ shake of his head, his lips compressed. “Peter?” he asked, his voice small, nothing like it was when he begged for a story or to be shown a move.

It made Peter look at Mike, and keep looking until Mike copied Micky and nodded. “Go on,” he husked, his throat hurting and his lips dry.

“Yeah, please do.” Davy had no trouble finding his voice or to use it to continue, spitting out something he'd just learned: “Tell us how you broke the guy code, and slept with my chick.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

“We were talking. Then drinking.” Peter nudged Mike’s glass toward him and raised his chin. When Mike didn’t move, Micky poured him a dram and Mike’s hand reached out for it and he knocked it back. “Dancing…”

“Surfing.” Mike remembered Peter’s too-damn-sexy costume, shirt hanging open, chest on display, tight shorts showing off his thighs—Bettina had stood no chance. If she were there, he’d have clinked glasses with her in acknowledgment.

“She was tired. We sat inside a small carriage and talked a little more. Moved on to our favorite composers—Bach for keyboards, Handel for harp. Then decided to go for a drive and ended up back on the boat, in the cabin and…”

 _Made beautiful music together._ Mike remembered them well at the afternoon event, discussing piano and harp, then at the evening celebration, Bettina’s small face glowing with happiness when she’d played on stage with them. She and Peter were both musical, both cultured, both spoke a few languages. They loved books and history. Bettina was beautiful, Peter gorgeous. Both had freckles. Liked boats, seemingly. Mike let the jigsaw pieces rain down on him, let them hit the ground and link together to make one big picture. Peter really did have a lot in common with her…and now, apparently, one more thing.

“And—” Peter continued.

“And you got her up the duff!” Davy gloated, his voice loud and singsong.

“Davy! Be _sensitive_!” Micky hissed.

“Sorry.” Davy lowered his voice. “You got her up the duff,” he whispered. He could hardly finish his drink, his smile was so wide.

“Europeans. So decadent. All that bed hopping…” Micky tutted.

“Dolenz…that’s Slovene for brazen, right?” Mike snapped.

“You know, the time _I_ broke the guy code, you hung me out of the window by my ankles,” Davy recalled. He pointed at Peter. “I should be mad at you.”

“Why? Not like you struck out,” Micky observed.

“Davy, I’m—”

“Nah. ’S’all right,” Davy interrupted Peter. “Let’s chalk it up to midsummer madness, and the costume-fiesta thing?” Relief was obviously making Davy magnanimous—he hadn’t used the incident to wring any concessions out of anyone.

“We’re stone cool?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, you sly sod. Course. C’m’ere.”

Their hug, tight and long, got whistles and cheers from the chicks in the audience.

“Michael?”

So it was him now. Peter reached for him and Mike handed the baby to him without looking at her. He hoped his hands didn’t shake. But it wouldn’t have surprised him if they did: his arms felt weak. No; his entire top half. And his legs wanted to buckle under him. Well of course they would, when it felt like things—everything—was crashing down on top of him.

He opened his mouth to reassure them—reassure Peter—but what came out was, “I think I need to lie down.”

Which was how he found himself in the back room they’d all slept in, once upon a time. An early time. Early days. Back in the day. The huddle of folding army cots was still there, the room being an unofficial resting station, and out of habit, he unfolded four and lay on one.

Beds. He thought about beds and couples on beds, like it was a play. It _was_ a play—Peter had gone to see it, before he’d lived in Beechwood. The couples had names. The ringmaster and the tavern wench. The princess and the sheikh. The cat and the surfer. Peter—

“I’m here.”

Mike didn’t know if he’d said Peter’s name out loud. Peter nudged a second and third cot over to him, and placed Hope on the outside one with a rag dolly to play with. He made a bumper around the edge with a rolled-up blanket and lay on the middle bed, next to Mike, and shook a khaki blanket over them.

“What?” Peter asked, searching his face.

“I’m thinking about a play. Set in Venice? Not Cali Venice. _Italy_ Venice. No. That’s not— Vienna? Doesn’t matter.”

“Here. Talking of Venice…”

“Ha ha.” But Mike gulped down some water from the glass Peter held out for him. “Thanks. The kids okay?” He meant Davy and Micky. But now… “The boys,” he amended. “I wasn’t…”

“I know. You wouldn’t. The percussionists?”

God, how much Mike loved him even made him manage a smile.

“Gone to collect the instruments and stage clothes, for later.” He turned Mike’s wrist around to see his watch. He’d done that sometimes even before they were together and Mike had enjoyed the feeling of Peter’s strong, firm fingers enclosing his wrist and twisting it to see the time. Him buying Peter a watch to replace his lost one had been self-punishment. Self-surgery, more like, an attempt at excision, cutting off temptation. And cutting himself off from the thrill that zinged through him, the beat that his heart skipped. “For soon,” Peter finished, tapping the glass watch face.

“Why leave her? Her own daughter?” Mike’s question burst from him.

“I don’t know.” Peter slid his hand into Mike’s, his fingers through his.

“Guess.” Mike squeezed a little. “You know her. You’ve been thinking.” He tightened his grip and had to force himself to relax his hold.

Peter shrugged. “I guess…to do with the faction supporting Otto?”

Mike nodded, remembering how wearing onyx jewelry showed allegiance to the deposed archduke. “Like, maybe the queen having a baby out of wedlock would give his guys all the ammunition they needed to declare Bettina unfit to rule, to rally against her?”

“So she smuggled her out of the country, brought her to me until things are more settled.”

 _To me._ To Peter. Because he was— No. Mike still couldn’t say it. Still hadn’t accepted the shaking up of his image of Peter, of who and what Peter was, to encompass this. But he’d have to, have to expand his picture of Peter to include this more than new facet, this more than extra element. This change to his status. His identity. There. Mike was groping his way toward it. “Can you call her?”

“What if her enemies are listening in? I think it’s better to wait for her to call when it’s safe.”

Well, she knew the number. And the address. She’d been there, briefly and informally. And official letters had arrived, after she’d gone back home—an invite to her coronation, which they’d turned down, then a petition to the honors ceremony, which they hadn’t been able to refuse.

If she’d communicated with Peter since, Mike thought he’d have known. He would have seen the letter in the post, unless Bettina had used a PO box, like Elizabeth did. Wow. A vision of a whole row of PO boxes, all for different women, tried to bubble up. Mike flattened it down. No, there couldn’t have been any communication beyond the official souvenir thank-you and photos, or Bettina would have informed Peter about…the situation, and none of this would have been a surprise. Maybe her letters had been intercepted at source?

Mike started to say that but a soft knock on the door was Skye bringing in a warmed bottle of formula and a small transistor radio.

“She likes music. It calms her down for eating and sleeping,” Peter explained to Skye, who smiled as she left.

“She likes water too.” Mike fought not to picture what Peter had said. ‘ _We_ _ended up back on the boat, in the cabin and—’_ “Too like you do, I mean. Like the water. Can babies go swimming?”

He was grateful that Peter made a noncommittal noise and ignored Mike’s babbling. Well, he was busy with…Hope. With…the baby. That was still as near as Mike could get and even that felt like a plunge off a cliff into icy water. _Peter with a baby._ He seemed calm about it, but Mike saw the thinning of his bottom lip where he was nibbling on the inside of it and the slight tremble to his hand, holding the bottle. This was earth-shattering for him, too.

Mike took a breath. “So, you got a little princess.” _Literally._ He studied Peter who sat with his head bent over Hope, his hair loose, over his face, his posture protective. He’d bonded with her right away and he seemed familiar to her—Mike’s theory, or stuff he remembered, was seemingly right. Hope’s eyes were on him, her hands curling and uncurling either side of the bottle. The two of them were alike. Both beautiful.

“She is,” Peter agreed, raising his eyes to Mike.

“Course she is—she looks like you.” He’d said it—or as near as he could—and the waves hadn’t closed over his head, pulling him down. He was bobbing up and down on them. “But, Peter, I think we’d better still say she’s your sister. In Beechwood, I mean. To people, in general. In case Babbitt gets mad and, well. You know.”

“I see.” Peter’s lips folded. “Is that the only reason?”

“I don’t know.” It sounded like the sort of answer Peter himself gave. Honest, but… “This is a big deal.” That much was honest, and true.

“It is,” Peter echoed, his voice quiet, but Mike detected the steel in it.

He tried to think through the implications. What if things settled down in Harmonica and Bettina sent for her daughter? Peter would want to take her. Would go visit. And if he wanted to be a part of Hope’s life…would he have to live there? Or work out some six-month here, six-there arrangement? Not like they had money for lawyers, if it came to a custody battle over the kid.

No. He wouldn’t freak out over this. He calmed his mind, grasping for the techniques he’d been learning, and sat, leaning against Peter while he fed his— _Too soon._ Fed Hope. Mike focused on the rhythmic nose of Hope suckling from the bottle and her satisfied chirrups after. “Na na,” came when Peter held up higher to bring up her wind, then “Mama?” Mike thought he heard, when Hope looked at him and shook her head.

“Wait.” Peter’s words registered, better late than never. “Later? Jeez, it’s _Friday_?” It wasn’t just the drink confusing him. Things were even more topside-down than usual.

“And the premiere. I know.” Peter patted Hope’s back. “I could really do without it, but…”

“When one’s a TV star…” Mike finished for him, laughing as did Peter when Hope burped loudly at that. Huh. Kid had Micky’s timing…and his sensibilities.

***

“This is a _madhouse_.” Micky surveyed the packed soundstage.

“I ain’t never heard you say that disapprovingly before,” Mike replied

“Just look!”

Mike didn’t want to. He’d had enough of the Hot Spot, the pretend teen-hangout diner set when they’d filmed _Hollywood Hills High_ there on stage nine of the Monumental Studios on Sunset last month. But now the first episode of the three-part Summer Special was airing and the gala showing was being held here, the space had been expanded to four times the size, held scores more tables and chairs and rows of seats and sofas and beanbags and was crowded with people and buzzing with noise and thrumming with excitement and—

“It really says in our contracts we have to be here?” Mike griped.

“And play.” Micky turned to stare at Mike. “It was your idea, remember! You got them to put in that clause, to give us more money and exposure!”

He probably had, but the executives, in charge of this revolutionary TV concept—having new material after the summer reruns, to lead viewers up to the new season _and_ satisfy clamouring teenybopper demand—had run with it.

“Run all the way,” Micky agreed, looking over the production officials, the cast, crew, people they’d met on location filming at Doheny Mansion, reporters, mainly from teen mags like _Justine_ and _Dream Boat_ , or whatever those publication were called, fan club winners, the casts’ guests and entourage. Well, the Monkees had used up their guest tickets too.

That Mike was glad to be here in a way, kind of grateful for the respite from things, for the distraction from their own drama, flooded him with shame.

“Is it Herpes the snake guy or Snake the herpes guy?” inquired a musical female voice behind them and Mike turned to greet Mary-Grace Benning, or ‘Melodie Mignon’, the French exchange student and catalyst for many of the events in the summer special. Well, when that wasn’t Jeanie or Lulu or Skip or Rico or…

“His name’s Snake, according to his business card.” Mike had gotten a ride off the eccentric snake handler. He hugged Grace. They’d gotten off to a rocky start, all Mike’s fault, but he liked her a lot and respected her talent and determination to make her own way. “How you doing, babe?”

Grace brushed back her long dark bangs. “Someone in the street called me a scheming French tramp yesterday! Told me to crawl back to the Paris gutter where I belong!”

“ _What?_ ” Mike was horrified.

“That’s fantastic! It means the publicity’s working!” Al, the junior associate producer whose responsibility the Summer Special was, beamed at Grace. “Stew, get over here!” he called and beckoned to oh yeah, ‘Wade’, Skip’s cousin, newcomer, living with Skip and his family.

Stew was followed by Tamara from _Just Teen_ , not Justine from _Justine_ as Mike had first thought. He’d since learned her name—and how determined she was in pursuit of items to print in the monthly, which had made him just as determined to avoid her lens and tape recorder. Now, he pretended not to notice the steely _you’re next, Nesbit_ glint in the coffee-brown and coffee-sharp gaze she turned on him.

“Shall we go with another ‘caught unawares’ look?” Grace asked, and Stew/Wade nodded and draped an arm over her shoulders and they both turned wide-eyed, half-startled faces to a click from Tamara’s camera before she stalked away, bumping Mike with her shoulder as she did so.

“Their real-life dating fits so well!” Al, taking liberties with the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘life’, literally rubbed his hands.

“With the plotline?”

“Of Melodie and Lulu fighting over Wade, yeah,” Al answered.

“Oh, I think Melodie’s ahead on points in this fight,” Mike commented, glad Grace didn’t seem to mind the PR…or Stew’s proximity and attentions.

“Stew played clarinet in band at junior high,” she announced, blushing. She was a great harpist and vocalist herself.

“Maybe ‘Wade’ could play it in _Hollywood Hills High_ , seeing as how the music side of things is taking off,” Mike suggested to Al, a little maliciously, but Al was focused on his tasks.

“Where’re the others?” His gaze grew more anxious the more he peered around. “I think I saw most of you just now, but where’ve they got to?”

“Well, Davy’s…” Crouched behind the Hot Spot counter, pointing up at the actress who played the waitress and shaking his finger, Mike saw. Being taller than average gave him advantages and brought him problems. He didn’t know which this one was. He tried to think of a polite way to answer Al’s question with something that wasn’t, “ _Hiding from Twin Peaks Tina_.” Who had he been messing her around with? Probably her own mother, going by what they’d learned recently. “Around,” he settled on.

“And Micky?” asked Al, running his gaze from the chattering, squealing crowds to the stage.

“Why, he was right…” Mike caught a glimpse of dark curls next to Davy, as Micky, also crouching low, shook his head, and pointed a slim hand up and across at…the actress who played the coma victim in _The Edge of Forever_.

“Coma chick?” Grace’s lips tightened. Micky had asked her out and she’d accepted…before realizing about ten seconds later what a horn dog he was. “I didn’t know he ‘knew’ her.”

“Oh well, see now, they go back a long way. She was his Tub Tot Twin, the Sally Suds to his Baby Bubbles,” Mike, still feeling devilish, informed her, making her explode with laughter. Grace deserved that, way Micky had tried to set up a two-for-one date…with Grace and Lola the two and him the one. “It’s true—you knew Mick was a child actor, right?”

Grace wasn’t the only one around them chuckling at that, and at the furious brown eyes glaring up at them from under a tumble of brown curls.

“And where’s Peter?” Al queried, his eyes narrowing. “I definitely haven’t seen him all evening—there’s nothing going on, is there?”

“Going on? Oh, what is this ‘going on’?” Mike put a dismissive scoff into his voice and tried not to let his shoulders hunch defensively. A lot could be said to be going on with Peter, none of which Mike wanted getting out, and none of which he hoped, really _hoped_ , would stop them getting through this evening…although he couldn’t shake off the dark feeling trying to settle on him.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

“Well, I don’t see Peter,” Al repeated, like a dog with a bone. “I see a lot of musicians here because we asked all the groups who auditioned for the spot and didn’t get it, but not—”

“What? Not the Band of Two?” Grace paled and stood on her toes to peer all around.

“No.” Al scowled. “Nor Lindy Lina.”

“Goddamn idiots.” Mike’s glower outdid Al’s. Those three whack jobs had frightened Grace and almost caused Peter to get hurt. Oh, he kinda hoped they’d show their faces. He was just in the mood for a rumble. He gazed over the crowds too, just in case. No sign of the Band of Who Cares, but he did see actors and actresses from the other shows filmed here at Monumental. He nudged Grace to catch Laci-Mae’s girls from _Evening Star_ , who’d seemingly been ordered to attend in their saloon-girl costumes, all frilly skirts and tight corsets.

“Wonder if Micky’s got any history with _them_?” he asked, wanting to cheer Grace up.

“If not, I bet he’d like to,” she said on a sigh. She jerked her chin at the stage and lowered her voice to add for his ears only, “Doesn’t look like we’ll be playing before this thing starts, then, right?”

Damn again—that had been the plan: previewing the scene from the Special, in which pop-music lover ‘Melodie’ sashayed down the length of the Hot Spot to join the band on stage. Al checked his watch against his assistant Leslie’s and opened his mouth, presumably to pitch a fit that things weren’t going to time.

“Yeah, change of plan. We can’t play right now.” Mike got in first. “And no, there’s no problem— Peter must still be bringing in our guests.”

“Heard you invited half your neighbourhood,” Leslie said, grinning.

“No choice, man.” Davy, judging it safe, slid out from under the counter and joined them. “Not once we knew Mrs. Homer was a diehard Skipster.”

Mike still couldn’t imagine the elderly woman haunting the Santa Monica newsstands for the latest _TripleH Special_ or _Teen TV_ , but she must do, if the extensive collection of Skip pinups and posters she’d shown them was any indication. “The things you see when y’ain’t got your gun,” he reflected. “Oh nothing. Just a local saying back home. But anyway, these folks aren’t here to see us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Davy said with a sniff. “I’m hot property, me.”

“Yeah, we saw how you nearly burned yourself there, hiding under the coffee pot.” Mike gave him the stink-eye. “Al, you don’t wanna take the focus from the stars before the thing’s underway. Get _them_ up there early, whip up the excitement. More,” he added, as a squeal nearby made him stick his finger in his ear. “The roof ain’t quite off yet.”

“The audience is here for Larry and Danny, not us,” Grace added. Mike flashed her a grateful smile.

Al looked from the main actors to a huddle of executives. “I guess we could start the intro now. And you’ll play at the commercial break?”

“Of course! We’ll leap right on up there,” Mike assured him, hoping so. “Pete!” he shouted a minute later, glimpsing him make his way through the crowd. He doubted Peter heard him: the audience were going wild at the principal cast dragging stools onto the stage. “Peter!”

He pushed back through the crowd to where Peter stood with the newly arrived group and frowning over at stage in some confusion. Yeah, he’d be expecting to see it occupied by three Monkees in search of a bassist. Mike ran his gaze over the Beechwood people. They’d all been planning to come together, in a convoy of three vehicles, and Mike hoped one of them had volunteered to watch Hope. The party contained lots of people—mostly women—with childcare experience and common sense. He saw Mrs. Homer, Joyce Rawlings, the veterinarian practice receptionist—

“ _Toby!_ ” Peter was shouting, not for the first time, judging by his tone. “Are you sure you’ve got it now? Let’s leave the term babysitting aside, as that had you confused, but _watching_ her means looking after her. Taking care of her.” He held the baby out to Toby. “So just hold on to her and don’t leave her alone, okay?”

“Woah there, shotgun.” Mike rubbed Peter’s upper back. Just a little—all he could manage in public. He pressed up against Peter, hoping that soothed him. “C’mon, guys, let’s get our seats.” He nudged Peter and guided the others over to the table reserved for them, Micky, dark glasses once more in place, helping him grab chairs and stools for the overspill. He’d just sat down when Larry finished his short speech of “thanks and we hope you stay with us for next season” and a highlight reel of last season started playing on the huge screen. It had the fans shrieking and cheering at the best moments and the show’s good guys and booing and hissing at the bad guys, for all these changed seemingly week to week.

“Holy moly!” Micky stuffed ripped-up napkin in his ears when the place erupted at the famous Rico-Skip’s-mom kiss scene. “Holy hell!” He clapped his hands over his plugged ears when the place blew its top at the subsequent Rico-Skip fight scene, the one that started in the gym, went down the corridor, out through the smokers’ patio, and finished on the top diving board of the pool…and then in its deep end. “If they’re like this now, how they gonna react when the Special starts?”

Mike didn’t get a chance to guess: Hope started shrieking and crying louder than any teenaged or middle-aged fan. “It’s the noise,” he shouted to Peter. “And the heat, I’d guess.”

The look Peter threw him in reply said _No shit, Sherlock_. He stood. “Toby, could you please take _my_ _sister_ into the dressing room? I’ll show you where.”

“But…” Toby pointed at the screen where a hand was tucking something small and ticking into the tail pipe of the hot rod Rico was about to race against Skip in.

“There’s a screen in there.” Peter stood, ushering Toby and Hope away.

“Was it Rico who did it? Only I missed that week,” Toby called over her shoulder.

“That’s his car and he’s driving! Why would he… How could he…” Mike, as so often with Toby, gave in. He stood. He should follow Peter, help him settle the baby down.

“Great timing. Just when I need you, Nesquik,” came from his side.

Even if Mike hadn’t glimpsed the fall of black hair, he’d have known it was Tamara. Her lifting her camera to her face made her meaning clear. She’d reminded him of Kat when he’d first seen her, but Kat’s hair was a little shorter now and Tamara’s had glints of dark brown and even copper in it, if you looked. She crooked a finger.

Mike shook his head, his usual reaction when dealing with her. “Tamara.” He used her name deliberately and saw it register. “I learned your name, see?” Not Justine, any more than the magazine she worked for was. “You can stop with the jokes on mine now.”

“Too late, Nebbish,” she told him.

“And I’d rather not.” Mike nodded at the camera.

“Yeaaahhh. You made that plain, avoiding me for two weeks straight,” she retorted, flinging her long dark hair back and focusing her camera as she advanced. He backed away. “Look, today’s the last day of anything to do with the Special. I gotta get shots of everything and everyone. Last chance. So it’s this or I follow you to the john and get a shot of you at the urinal or on the can.”

“Not sure I wouldn’t prefer that,” Mike volleyed back at her. He stopped where she’d steered him. “The cool booth? Really?” The diner’s ‘cool’ corner booth, the one the stars of the show were usually seen at, making it an iconic _HHH_ image, set between the counter and stage, against a wall of posters.

“Look up,” Tamara ordered.

“What— Oh!” Mike pointed, unable to believe a poster of them, the Monkees was gracing the famous wall. The next second he collapsed onto the booth’s seat: Tamara had taken advantage of his back being turned and him being off guard to get a knee to the back of one of his, making him crumple forward. “Sheesh, woman!” he griped, swiveling round to sit. “Where’d you learn that technique—the army?”

“Yeah. I did my military service. Eighteen months,” she replied.

“Really?” Never having known known her to joke, Mike was too busy puzzling that, and that something about her long lean body was military-looking—maybe her olive drab tank tops? The field jacket look to her sleeveless olive green vest with all its cargo pockets for her rolls of film, batteries and notepads? The heavy silver rectangular pendant that could have been a dog tag?—to notice that she was packing the booth with cast from the show. Not the leads, but the minors and extras. And all chicks. All being directed to sit in the booth, elbows on table, chins on cupped hands, making starry eyes at him.

“Hey, come on!” Mike protested, more crowded each second. He was squashed in the corner now, pressed in by nubile young flesh in a cheesy, hackneyed ‘starlets with star’ image.

“You had to do it the hard way, Nebulous,” Tamara retorted. “If you hadn’t avoided me every day you were on set, I wouldn’t—”

“Be taking your revenge.” Yeah, he had been avoiding her, each and every tall, lean, long dark-haired bossy inch of her. He’d thought it safer. But now, trapped by a tide of young chicks, he stared helplessly at Tamara’s sure, suntanned hands on her camera.

“Yay!” the girl next to him, all golden-blonde bounce and flowery perfume, cheered. “I won!”

“Yeah?” Mike felt he had to reply, even though he was trying to breathe in to avoid touching the soft flesh pressing in on him from all sides. Oh, and along the back of the booth. He turned his glare from the brunette lying behind him, legs kicked up at the knees and chin propped on hands, to the implacable Tamara.

Were all the chicks wearing sleepwear? Least, their outfits looked enough like baby-doll pajamas and nightdresses to have him sweating. He kinda wanted to peek down at their legs to see if they were wearing fluffy slippers too, but thought better of it. He was growing hard as it was. He shifted, to make sure his crotch was concealed by the tabletop, and tried to focus. “Yeah? What d’ya win?”

“I got to sit next to you, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Silent!” the blonde sing-songed.

“And me, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Brooding,” announced a chick on his other side, slightly darker blonde than the first, but whose fruity lip gloss scent competed with the first’s floral perfume, and whose smile was just as wide. She winked, and the first chick pressed harder, all down his side. Had that minx of a reporter put them up to it? Encouraged them, maybe—they’d been lowkey coming on to him from the off. They’d upped the dial on it today, sure, but after the couple of days he’d had, their blatant flirting was, well, not uncongenial.

“Either of you artistic?” he asked the blondes. Angie, he knew was the name of the one to the left and the one to the right began with a P, he thought, despite how he’d kept his distance from the gaggle of pretty, sparky chicks who worked on the show.

“Artistic? I don’t think so, no?” Angie replied, doubt in her tone.

“I do jigsaw puzzles, if that counts? Why?” asked the darker one.

“Oh, nothing. Just things are kind of topsy-turvy, you know?” Things…as in his types: small blondes who weren’t creative and a tall, lean-muscled, domineering brunette who was. And who was flashing him a sardonic, appraising look. He’d been right to keep her at arm’s length, because under different circumstances— He had to laugh.

“Love the headgear! So _you_ ,” declared the first blonde, reaching up to stroke it.

“That’s me all right, the prat in the hat. Oh, nothing.” Mike waved a hand. “Something Davy said.” He laughed again and the girls joined in, although they probably didn’t understand. And that was when Tamara, snorting with laughter herself, took some snaps, the _click-swish_ of her Nikon making everyone perk up.

“You should laugh more, Nitpick,” she said. “You’re pretty when you lighten up.” And of course her dead-on parody of how male shutterbugs behaved toward their female subjects had him guffawing. Her smirk turned pure wicked when she made a motion with her hand and the two blondes flanking him leaned in to kiss him at the same time, one on either cheek.

“You little she-devil!” Mike spluttered. “You better quit it right this second or I’ll—” He gave up on speech in favor of grabbing paper napkins from the metal holder on the table and scrubbing at possible lipstick marks.

“Here. I got a compact,” the girl lying behind him was just saying when Mike caught Peter’s eye. Caught it and saw it looking from the petite blondes either side of Mike to the taller brunette in front of him, calling the shots. Mike saw it as clearly as Peter did, his knowledge of Mike’s usual type and what he’d recently learned about his…other predilections, all flashing before Peter’s eyes. Mike shook his head, trying to work out a way to extricate himself from the corner of the packed booth without using chicks’ chests and upper thighs as handholds and footholds.

“And there we have a textbook-perfect illustration of not knowing which way to turn,” commented a new male voice.

“ _J?_ ” Mike glanced from Peter to the lead singer and bassist of the Foreign Agents and back again. God. As if being trapped on Chick Island wasn’t bad enough—

“It’s starting!” screamed someone, seconds before the teen drama’s familiar heavy guitar and finger-snapping theme tune blared out. Like a siren’s call, luring sailors onto rocks, it emptied the cool booth in seconds.

“Catch you later?” J murmured.

Mike shrugged and nodded.

“That’s always supposing you don’t have to catch strings of plastic beads first,” J added. 

“Like Mardi Gras?” Mike didn’t get it. “Why—”

“This is about as packed and as hot. Oh, and talking of catch, catch me if I faint from this …crush?”

Mike grinned, catching the double meaning. “J. You’re one tough cat. You’re liable to get perforated eardrums with all the shrieking, but that’s nothing you can’t handle, right?”

“Not much _I_ can’t handle, given half a chance.” With a lick of his lips as salacious as any the blondes had demonstrated, J squeezed away.

It was stupid and nonsensical, but it made Mike laugh, and instead of getting mad at Tamara, he just threw a mock scowl and a finger wag her way…both of which she captured. Of course. Imagining his write up in _Just Teen’s A Scoop of TripleH_ column, Mike laughed again.

“What?” Peter queried when Mike slid into the chair they’d saved for him,

“Nothing. Take too long to tell. Let’s just try and get through this and maybe even enjoy it, huh?”

Although he doubted from Peter’s pinched expression and thinned lips they would.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

As much as Mike wanted to slide his arm alongside Peter’s and take his hand, or lay a hand on his knee, he couldn’t. All he could do to show solidarity and give comfort was press close.

Peter wrinkled his nose. “You reek of perfume. White Shoulders, to be precise.”

 _Yeah? You smell of diaper rash cream. Zinc oxide_ , _if I ain’t mistaken_ , Mike didn’t reply. He jerked his head back in the direction he’d just come from, to remind Peter what he’d been put through unwittingly and unwillingly, marooned all at sea on Extras Island orchestrated by Captain Tamara. Huh. It was all right for Peter. He’d happily posed with his banjo and guitar as soon as the she-general had demanded, and looked goddam sexy doing so. The offers had better start rolling in. And not just from his friend Stephen—Mike _really_ had to stop prefixing his name like that—who was putting something else together in some mini recording studio he had in the house he was living in, up in the Canyon.

“Oh, you’re probably scenting fear,” he replied, adding, in a mutter, “Flop sweat.” And they hadn’t even appeared in the episode yet. Peter pressed back against him, just a little, and Mike’s heart lightened.

Ten minutes later—and they still hadn’t appeared—and Peter twisted and turned. “Isn’t that Toby?” he muttered through gritted teeth.

“Might not be. She’s got a twin,” Mike tried, hoping—

“Yeah, a brother,” Peter snapped, getting to his feet.

Al got to his, his face one huge worried frown. “Where—”

Mike cut him off by making a gesture like he was taking a photo. “You know Tamara,” he added, shrugging. Wasn’t a lie. He gave discreet signals to the other two, indicating they should come with, go see. Damn. It wasn’t long now until the commercial break when they had to leap up on stage and perform.

“Mike?”

“I’ll explain later,” he muttered to Grace, in answer to her whisper.

“Okay… And I have some industry gossip—well, more than that…professional talk? A lead? Would that be right? To run by you,” she whispered, her hand covering her mouth.

“Sure,” he promised her, already heading off to the dressing room.

Inside, he stopped and looked from Peter to Toby. “What—”

“I couldn’t hold her any longer. She was burning me. I’m sensitive to heat, especially my hands. It’s why I can’t cook. Or iron. Or hoover.” Toby gave an apologetic shrug.

“She means Hope’s got a temperature.” Peter glared at Toby, who raised her hands in a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ stance. “And she won’t eat.”

“It’s all the excitement of new places and people.” Toby tugged at Mike’s arm. “My mother didn’t take me out anywhere when I was that age. Until I was…about five, I think. When I went to kindergarten. Until then, she left me at home.”

“Which is where I’m taking _her_.” In the silence greeting poor Toby’s sad anecdote, Peter finished placing Hope carefully in her basket and lifted it up.

“ _What?_ ” Davy jerked his thumb toward the studio. “What about—”

“Maybe you didn’t hear.” Peter spoke slowly, enunciating clearly. “She has a fever. She needs a cool bath. I think she also has an upset stomach, maybe from her bottle being at the wrong temperature.”

“But we gotta—”

The flash of topaz in the glint Peter bestowed on him silenced Micky.

“Is…everything righteous?” J, at the door, looked around the room.

“Not really,” Micky told him.

With a, “Hi, J. Bye, J,” Peter pushed past him.

“We’re down a bassist,” Mike explained, his eyes on J.

“Hey, what’s got two thumbs, plays bass, and owes you? _This_ cat.” J jerked his thumbs into his chest. “I can fill in.”

Peter turned. “Take my place? Well then, problem solved, right, Michael?” The look in his eye said that while tonight’s immediate problem might have been overcome, but there were plenty more on their way. And the way he’d phrased his question… Peter didn’t know— Did he? But he’d gone before Mike could even think how to form any query he might have.

 _Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day_ —and hopefully easier than this one, Mike thought, as, out on stage, they started the almost folk-rock number. It was catchy and upbeat, complementing the song about to be seen on screen…and, being an early track of theirs, had a fairly standard, unsophisticated baseline. _No Time_ —again, an apt title, seeing as they had mere minutes—was next and also easy, basically a jam with goof-off lyrics, and so easy for a newcomer to the group to manage.

Mike insisted the Foreign Agents went on in their place at the second commercial break, staring down anyone trying to argue. He narrowed his eyes at their new song, _Moonlight Windows_. Those lyrics, about looking back up at a lighted window at night… If he didn’t know better, he might have thought— Catching his eye, J winked, big and slow.

Mike barely remembered the third break after that, but their performance after the Special ended started with _Let’s Dance On_ , repeating what they’d played in the episode.

“Need another barnstormer,” J suggested, prompting Mike to launch into _All The King’s Horses_. He’d always thought the way Micky drove that number via his drums was like a gaucho driving a team of horses, anyway. Huh—maybe that was the reason the percussion sounded so Latin on it. The drive and stomp continued in _Clarksville_ , and the applause, taking Mike a bit by surprise, led them into doing their theme song for an encore and walk-off.

Only they couldn’t, not quite yet, with the crowd whistling and cheering for more, in the mood to groove a little longer. Mike took their measure and grinned. “Go for the _Triple_. Like we rehearsed, guys. And J, hit up anything on the C major scale.”

He was still grinning as Micky counted them in for their version of the _Hollywood Hills High_ theme tune, which made the audience go wild. Would they have been so enthusiastic if Micky and Davy were singing the lyrics they’d invented? Mike could still hear the chorus: “Skip’s a’doin’ it with Jeanie, Jeanie’s a’doin’ it with Rico, Rico’s a’doin’ it with everyone…and es-pec-ialy…Skip’s mom.” Probably not.

The crowd wasn’t discriminating and it was actually like playing in a club, except for the screens behind them, showing a loop of the beginning and end of this instalment of the Special, to aid comprehension and whet appetites. The beginning was easy to understand: Rico sweeping Jeanie away on his motorbike after being there for her when she caught Skip with Lulu at the dance. But the end?

“Why’s Jeanie wearing a big headscarf and working in a scrap-metal junkyard?” he asked when they’d finished and stepped off the stage. He pointed up at Skip finding the missing Jeanie, the dramatic climax to this first part.

“It’s Rico’s father’s,” Micky answered. “Jeanie lost her memory when she hit her head on that Buick swinging from its chains when she was fighting with Rico.”

“But…” Mike extended his approach to Toby to teen drama and gave in, shaking his head instead. Music started, filling the studio, and within seconds, knots of people were dancing again.

“Hey.” One step behind him, J blew out a cloud of smoke from the cigarette he was gulping in and jerked his chin at the stage. “Sorry. Know I ain’t a patch on Pete.”

“But seeing as he laid a patch…” Mike couldn’t help punning in reply. And it was true—Peter had lit out of there. J’s cool-vaguely-jazz-cat persona was kinda catching, Mike had to admit. It was fun, any rate, J not taking it or himself too seriously. Which prompted Mike to continue, “Playing’s more your hobby, really, right? Something to, I don’t know, escape work and pressure, not—”

“A career, no.” J tipped his cigarette toward Mike to underscore his meaning. “It’s fun and if we make it big, we make it big, ya know? So, what’s the what with the ankle-biter?”

J…liked gossip and gossiping. Mike hesitated, making J shrug. “Tell me, or don’t. But I’m betting that ain’t his sister, right? So he’s got a baby.” He turned away from the smell of dope drifting out from behind the café counter with an, “I don’t smoke that stuff. Makes me too mellow. I like to stay sharp. Stay _edgy_.”

 _Stay funny_ , Mike added, silently, fighting a grin at J turning up his jacket collar. He expected him to slot on a pair of dark glasses.

“Must be frustrating…having a kid in the bachelor pad. Crimp your style.”

“ _Cramp_ , isn’t it?” Mike took two sodas from the bottles someone was setting out on the counter.

“Crimp as in crimp, meaning to bend or deform…or make you feel like crimping.” J took a bottle from Mike.

“As in, _huh_?”

“It means to go out entrapping seamen. Really!” he said when Mike spluttered on his drink. “Seamen as in _sailors_ , of course… Why, what were you… Oh, _naughty_!” J gave an exaggerated purse of his lips. “Sailors or soldiers, actually. Men in the services, dig? They didn’t have the air force back then. Pity. My faves. I like to…thank them for their…service.”

“I was in the— Oh, right. You know.” Mike shook his head, enjoying the banter. “J, you’re a trip.”

“And you promised to catch me if I fall.” J clinked his drink against Mike’s and looked at the bottles. “Shall I be the one to say it? Well then, bottoms up.”

Throwing back his head to stop the fizzing in his nose from spluttering again, Mike caught sight of the Foreign Agents’ drummer looking over at them. Micky called that drummer ‘Meathead’ but his ‘name’ was T-Bone, Mike knew, and right now, T-Bone was making a secret ‘fingers crossed for you’ gesture at J and jerking his chin at Mike. _Shit._

“J…” Mike angled him away from the clump of people near them. “I wanna tell you something in real confidence, okay? _Real_ ,” he underlined.

“Okay?” J recovered from being startled. “So, pinky up?” he asked, his eyes on Mike’s.

Mike blinked, more so when J held his hand out with his pinky finger raised and facing Mike.

“Guess it’s a regional thing? Means you can tell me something secret you ain’t told anyone else and which can’t ever be told to anyone else,” J explained.

“Oh. Well, it’s not… Just that Peter and me, we’re together. Just over a month now.” He refused to add anything, especially a _sorry_ or an _I just wanted you to know_. It was what it was. J and Mike were what they were.

J lit another cigarette, his focus on that. He concentrated on blowing out a neat plume of smoke. “And you already got a kid? You’re quick as bunnies! Who needs dames, huh? No kidding, Mike? For real? No foolin? Ain’t joshin’ me?”

“ _Jeremiah!_ ” Mike burst out.

“Sorry. Pardon me.”

J’s response startled Mike—hearing his real accent. It was close to how Mike recalled J’s father had talked. He drained his soda.

“Like I said… must be frustrating? Guessing it wasn’t expected? Accident? Surprise?”

“We’re kind of at the _huh?_ stage still,” Mike admitted, reaching to deposit his empty bottle behind him and clamping his lips together so he didn’t add, “ _and we might never get beyond it_.”

“And… Oh, hey, you need help? ’Cause if so, we can bring the baby to my mom. She’s been wanting grandkids for forever now, and she’s said she doesn’t care if they’re not in wedlock. Really!” he stressed, at Mike’s scoff. “She’s got a room fitted out as a nursery, man! I swear. She’s doin’ nothin’ but showing me baby photos these days. Relatives’, neighbors’, celebrities’, random pics from magazines…”

“J—” Mike tried.

“Seriously, Mike. We can take the baby back home and say a chick accused me—or you don’t dig the murk, right?—a friend, then, of knocking her up, and ask Mom to look after it for a bit. You can take the kid back when necessary.” J didn’t seem to be kidding. He stubbed out his cigarette, looking all business.

“Yeah, and what about your dad?” Mike asked.

“Oh, he’d be glad. Keep her occupied, keep her nose out of the business…which would leave more time for his secretary.”

“Ooh.” That had Mike wincing. He passed J back the soda he’d been holding for him. “Sorry, man.”

“Latest in a long line.” J drained the bottle. “How they get the job, and my sister does all the real work. Men, huh? Dogs.” He shook his head.

“I dunno, J. It seems a bit—”

“Byzantine?” J finished for him.

Mike laughed. “What is it with all these— _Extras!_ ” He ducked down, avoiding Angie and her friend, their lipstick and lip gloss freshly applied, perhaps for round two.

“Ah. I getcha.” J stood in front of him, a human shield. “You don’t fancy being the Monkee meat in their white-girl-bread sandwich. Don’t blame you. Now, him…”

“ _Rico?_ ” Mike gaped, following J’s eyeline.

“What can I say?” J’s shrug rippled his entire body. “I’m a sucker for bad boys. And when I say sucker…”

“J, you’re a fucken riot,” Mike had to admit. He straightened, almost brushing against Tamara as he did so. She’d come up close.

“I know there’s no point asking you to dance, Nashville, but who’s your friend?” she asked.

“J.”

“Just an initial?” She looked from Mike to J at the latter’s answer.

“What can I say? Life’s short.”

“You…wanna dance?”

“Sure. Oh, and I don’t make out in public, so just keep your hands to yourself, missy,” he cautioned her, leading her into the nearest gap.

He was a good dancer, liking it and priding himself on being hip to all the latest crazes and steps, Mike knew. Their first real conversation had been J riffing on their band’s name and the dance the monkey, ending in some dirty innuendo about the shake, the twist, and the shimmy being moves best performed in the men’s washroom…for one reason or another.

Now, Tamara caught his eye more than once, and the look in it as she did so had Mike wondering if there was more to her asking a guy he was friendly with to dance than wanting to frug with a cool blond. _Life, people, emotions, needs, desires…_ it was all so complicated and so and heavy and falling on him and right _there_. Like J, literally, back and catching him by surprise.

“I gotta ask, even though it’s uncool, but was I a stand-in tonight, like, not for the first or even the second time?” J’s voice was light but his tone was charged.

“No. I…I don’t think so.” Mike wanted to throw his hands up, like Pop confronted by something incomprehensible, like people overcooking pasta. “I didn’t know I liked him like that. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not a user. I’m—”

“Serious.” J stepped back.

“Yeah. Exclusive.” Perhaps grinning was wrong, but he was happy J was getting it.

“Huh. Story of my life. You know the saying, ‘wrong place, wrong face. And also ‘wrong guy, wrong fly’.”

“J…” Mike detected something flat and heavy beneath the façade. He had no need to lower his voice, not with the raucous music, and beckoned J a little closer. “All things being equal, I’d go for you in a second.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Trust me, things were different, I’d fuck that peachy little ass of yours so hard and so long and so good you wouldn’t be sitting right for a week.” Mike grabbed it to make his point, and J shivered and gasped, more so when Mike breathed, “Nor walking right, neither.”

“Well…” J coughed and tried again. “As they say, ‘free feel, feel free’.”

Mike inclined his head. “I ain’t free.”

“I hear that. I understand that. I respect that.” J took a pause to slide his cigarettes from a pocket. “As long as you hear and understand and respect that it won’t stop me spilling a bag of marbles and waiting for you to slip so I can be underneath you before you hit the ground.”

Cigarette between his teeth, he flipped his lighter off with a brisk click. “All, erm, _things_ not being equal.” He didn’t grope Mike, to make his meaning clear, but the glance he dipped to Mike’s crotch lingered some then lingered some more.

“ _Je-sus!_ ” Mike, although musing on what Grace had mentioned when she got the chance, was still laughing when he got into the car, and chuckling on and off most of the way home, to Micky and Davy’s bemusement. He did his best to ignore the heavy vibes emanating from inside the pad, but they had him taking a deep breath as he unlocked the door.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

Inside, he couldn’t ignore the mess though, the dishes in the sink and on the kitchen table, the flotsam and jetsam of magazines, books, notepads, pens, instruments and instrument bits—and now with added fluffy pink toys and plastic pink pacifiers and tiny pink clothing—all lying at high tide in the den as if washed there by a wave. How was it possible, when no one had been in the place all day, and had hardly been there yesterday either? But he guessed that was it—they were out so much, there was no time to clean up.

“So I’d better make a start now,” he replied to himself, rolling up his sleeves on his way to the kitchen.

“What?” Davy side-eyed him.

“This place is the pits, man!” Mike gestured in illustration, almost hitting Micky who came to stand in front of him.

“You know what you’re doing, right?” he asked.

“Er, yeah, trying to make this goddamn zoo even halfway liveable for humans and— No?”

Micky was shaking his head. “It’s displacement.” He continued before Mike could say, yeah, the entire pad was an example of things in displacement— “This, the immediate environment around you, is something you can control. Sort of. Can make manageable.”

“Mick—” Mike started.

“Yeah, right? _Oh!_ ” Davy gave a light-dawned nod. “You didn’t take it back, then? He got this new music mag, Mike—well, he thought it was a music magazine, about the new style, that San Francisco sound, and like the Warm Embrace play?”

“Psychedelic?”

“That’s it. Only he didn’t have his glasses on or with him so bought a copy of a journal called _Pop Psychology_!” Davy slapped his thigh, doubling over in laughter.

“And seems he’s read it cover to cover,” Mike lamented.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, dynamic duo.” Micky scowled.

“Am, thanks.” Davy straightened and wandered over to the stove to put the kettle on.

“Maybe I have been reading it, Mike. And maybe I know you’re not keen on going upstairs.” Micky said.

“Where baby makes three.” Davy pointed.

“I ain’t a coward.” Mike raised a finger and swung it from one to another of them.

“No one said the _C_ word,” Davy flashed back. “Can’t anyway, unless we got a dime to put in the swear jar.”

“Only _you_ said it, Mike,” Micky added, maybe going for compassionate or wise, but looking a little like he did when one of his Micky Specials had got the better of him that time. The M&M’s, salt, soy sauce, and French mustard, if Mike recalled correctly—and of course Micky had claimed the mustard being foreign had been the problem. American mustard would’ve been aces, he’d insisted, going to make an as-near-identical sandwich with yellow mustard as he could, in the name of repeatability, to prove the results of his hypothesis. He’d gotten as far as squirting hot dog mustard into a bowl of Froot Loops as prep work before having to race back to the bathroom. Mike…kinda felt like force-feeding him some of that toxic muck now.

“If I did, I’m unsaying it, okay?” Mike knew that wasn’t a word. Wasn’t a thing. “Well, guess I’m whacked. And yeah, this mess will still be here tomorrow…” He paused as long as he could without it seeming he’d zonked out, but neither of the other two instrumentalists in the room with him picked up their cues. Ignored ’em, if anything, instead of offering to help. The familiarity of that almost made him smile. “Suppose I could use a shower. I’ll be quick.”

He turned on his heel for the bathroom before either of them could ask why he wasn’t getting washed up in the upstairs non-suite and tell him not to use too much water as they wanted some. He was being considerate of Peter—and the baby—he told himself, showering down here and not making noise crashing about that stupidly tiny bathroom upstairs. It wasn’t to do with avoiding…anything.

Although, having to take a hasty shower meant he didn’t have time to ponder, think things through. He did some of his best puzzling-out in the shower. Or bath. Not so much in the actual water though, as in the ocean, whereas Peter and Mick, to some extent, claimed that cleared their heads. Yeah, maybe that was the difference? Mike didn’t necessarily want his head _cleared_ , not when he was sharpening up lyrics that’d come to him, or working through something he’d stored away for when he had time for it. Maybe that was it—not water but time—

“Jeez! All right!” he shouted in response to the thuds on the door. Davy’s, he recognized, and knew they wouldn’t stop, but would get louder and more irregular, in the way that set Mike’s teeth on edge, waiting for the next—as Davy knew—until he acknowledged them. “I know ya gotta do your beauty routine, Miss Universe.” Sarcasm really was the lowest form of…balm.

But Davy was right—the new water tank they’d installed provided hotter water, but less of it. He should…quit stalling. Fine. Leaving the bathroom, his robe thrown on over clean boxers, he had no excuse but to go up to bed right away. Unless he wanted to find a late movie and…be a coward. Maybe he should put a dime in the jar anyway. A penny in penance.

“Night,” he threw over his shoulder at the other two, who were almost ripping the TV Guide in half fighting over it, for all Davy had seemed keen on taking a shower. “Keep the noise down, huh?”

“’Ere, Mike, the kettle said to say hi!”

Knowing he’d regret it, he turned at Davy’s comment.

“Well, normally it’s us two begging you two that,” Davy explained. “Only…not the last couple of days.”

“Yeah well, it’s real tiring, having a baby about the place. All the work…” Which gave him an idea. “Hey, tomorrow, we’re having a meeting about it. Calling it now,” he added before either of the pair could protest at any irregularity. “About sharing out the extra work, yeah? Because we’re all in this together. We’d do it for any one of us, right?”

“Right,” came in a chorus, one Mike ignored the reluctant note to.

“Good.” He threw a _don’t even think about ducking outta this_ glance from one to the other.

“Hey, Mike, this should cheer you up—you didn’t notice I brought some friends home, did you?” Micky pointed to the wall near the sundeck and it took Mike a second to understand it wasn’t some kind of mirror reflecting them when they weren’t there but—

“You stole the poster? You stole the poster. Of course you stole the poster!” Mike admired the picture of them that had until recently adorned the Hot Spot wall. Tamara had done an excellent job, whatever her motives. They looked good. Professional. Real. He hoped it was a good omen. “Next step, our record in the juke box, right?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at it.

“A giant step,” deadpanned Davy, hitting Micky with a pillow and grabbing the guide from him.

Mike, feeling slightly lighter, and ignoring all the pink suddenly abounding in the pad, wended his spiral way upstairs.

Peter lying alone on the bed made all thoughts about getting off to sleep flee Mike mind. _Thoughts of getting off, however…_ He shucked his robe, slipped into bed and slid and arm over Peter. Peter, who was drowsy and soft-heavy with sleep, the way he was in the early mornings, when Mike would wake first and…wake him. Peter rolled onto his back, making Mike have to pull away a little.

“You’re tired,” he was sorry to surmise and even sorrier he’d surmised it out loud, and in a disappointed tone. _Crap._ “She better?”

“ _She?_ ”

 _Tired and cranky._ “Hope.”

“Go check.” _If you’re concerned._ Peter had more of a filter and didn’t say that out loud.

Seeing him and raising him, Mike did. Hope was sleeping and felt cool to the touch, in some structure that put Mike in mind of a cage or pen with no roof, on the floor next to Peter’s side of the bed.

“She seems good?” he tried, slipping back beside Peter. for them to lie side by side, facing each other. Peter looked so good in the moonlight spilling in the windows, and Mike tried to let him know this—not that he hadn’t told him before, several times—roving his gaze over Peter’s gorgeous body, knowing the appreciation he felt shone in his eyes. Peter’s tense shoulders relaxed a tad.

“Oh, it went okay.” _In case you’re concerned._ Mike stomped down on that tit-for-tat thought. “But we missed you. I missed you.” He cupped Peter’s face, bringing his close. “Like I always miss you when I’m not with you.” He dropped a sweet, light kiss on Peter’s lips to make his meaning clear. As soon as Peter’s opened his lips under Mike’s, Mike surged his tongue in, exploring, connecting, tasting. Not just the tea Peter had drunk before bed, or the spearmint of his toothpaste, but the true whole _Peterness_ of him, the too-many-to-realize notes of him that might ebb and recede, at times, but that Mike could chase and bring forth and wrap himself in.

The kiss deepened, became a living thing, made of mutual give and take, want and need, and once-was and here-is, and _more_ and _always_. Mike, his tongue duelling with Peter’s felt a smile tugging at his lips. With a hum of appreciation, he trailed his hand downward, stroking down Peter’s side and bringing his hand inward, making Peter’s lower stomach quiver under his fingertips. “ _Miss you,_ ” Mike said again, in a whisper this time, against Peter’s lips, licking at the sheen their kisses had coated them in.

He inched his hand up a little, his thumb splayed away from his fingers, ready to take Peter in hand, stroke him into hardness. Not that Peter wasn’t halfway there already. He loved how quickly his darlin’ got hard for him. Peter’s hand curled around Mike’s and because this was a thing they did, both of them playing together on one of them like that, it took Mike half a minute to realize Peter wasn’t working with him, upping the pressure and so increasing the pleasure—he was stopping Mike’s hand in its tracks.

“Michael, we can’t.”

“Why, sure we can, sugar,” Mike crooned, responding to Peter, the reluctant quasi-innocent. He stroked his thumb up to the head of Peter’s dick, intent on rubbing in the slow circle that drove Peter crazy and released enough pre-cum to make jacking him slick and sweet. “I’ll make it so good for you, darlin’. And I’ll stop anytime you ask me…”

“Then stop now.” The tone and the forceful grip of Peter’s hand on his told Mike this wasn’t part of any playacting they indulged in. He dropped his hand, thoughts stampeding through his brain. Was Peter mad about J? Mike hadn’t exactly been flirting. Just not… _not_ -flirting, maybe? Did he know about J? About Mike’s history with him, such as it was? Or more likely, Peter was bummed out because of that little stunt with the extras. A stunt Tamara had set-up. Did he think Tamara—

“I don’t feel right about having sex in front of Hope.” Peter flicked his gaze toward the baby pen. “It was bad enough when I thought she was my sister, but now, now—”

“Hope.” Hippie name. Hippie ideals, like the ones Peter subscribed to, were not adhering to convention. Believing in free love. Yeah, in theory maybe, because in practice, when faced with a situation that demanded he took charge of and responsibility for a child, Peter was proving as conventional as the pater familias he’d once dubbed Mike. Mike, who’d gone and looked the term up.

Mike was _so_ glad those thoughts didn’t cross the speech barrier, didn’t get blurted out. He shoved them right to the back of his mind, where they couldn’t be easily discerned by the strange telepathy they all seemed to share. And pitchforking those thoughts firmly away bumped them up against thoughts of J and what he’d said. _Offered…_

“J, from the Foreign Agents? We got talking about babies, kids, you know? After he saw you with Hope, I mean. He feels real sorry that this…was unexpected.” Was that a good save? Regardless, Mike plowed on. “He was talking about how his mom’s cuckoo for babies. Like, loves having ’em about the place and she’s pushing him and his sister into having ’em. Well, trying, you know? But what he said was she’d be really into looking after this baby for a while, no questions asked. About the parentage, I mean. So, we could— Just to give you a break. Worth thinking about, huh?”

Peter sat, looking down at Mike. “So replacing me worked out fine?”

“As J himself said, he ain’t a patch on you.” Mike sat too, fighting not to cross his arms over his chest. Peter did, though.

“Okay, let’s shelve that for now and take a more direct tack.” Peter’s tone held steady and Mike tried to prepare himself— “Do you want us to go? Wait, that’s not quite it. It’s…not me you want gone, is it? In fact, it’s _me_ you want. But just me.”

Mike breathed in and out a few times. Pity there was never a therapist around when you needed one. His would have been so proud of that. Given him a freebie pen or notebook. “Peter, I love you.” Peter’s face, reacting to this, almost made him want to chuckle. “What, you’re waiting for the _but_ , right?” He watched that register. “No, darlin’. No ifs or buts. Just that. Just I love you. So fucken much.”

“I know. Just like you do.” Peter sighed. “And the baby? Hope? My—”

“No. Not yet. I gotta be honest, Pete.” Mike thought back to the ease he’d felt with her right from the first, the natural way she’d slotted in. He held that image, tried to make it show, even though that wasn’t love. “But I guess I’ll come to love her? Isn’t that how it works? I’ll find a way. Do whatever it takes.”

Peter uncrossed his arms. “Thank you for your candour. Really. Sorry. That sounded off, didn’t it. I know in moments like this, situations of emotional rawness, I get a bit—”

“New England? Professorial?” Mike’s heart lightened at the smile trying to cross Peter’s face. Slight, nothing like his sunny beams or wicked, hot-eyed invitations, but it was there.

“Either. Both. Maybe.” Peter shrugged. “But, Michael, you do want her here?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Mike replied, not leaving a millisecond between Peter’s question and his answer, as if swiftness would disarm it, rob it of the ability to lock and load. “Yes.” He hoped that was true.

 _Prove it_ echoed through the room, as though Peter had spoken the words aloud. He hadn’t, had merely nodded, and moved to lie down, but Mike had heard. Heard the words and where they were coming from.

They didn’t make love that night either, just like the one before, but they did sleep entwined, Peter accepting the arm Mike looped over him, to pull him close. Although when Mike woke in the night, it was to see Peter had slid over to the edge of the bed, nearer to the baby.

 _Prove it._ The words, unspoken although they’d been, floated in the air as though they were written in smoke. Mike tasted them, and detected again not so much a challenge that Peter had thrown down but the need behind it.

 _Prove it._ Okay, he would. For Peter, he’d do anything.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

“Woah! No!” Mike called from the upstairs balcony when Peter stumbled out of their bedroom the next morning. Saturday morning. He stepped forward, hiding what he and Micky were doing. “Stay in there! You have tea and a bottle of formula.”

“I got it, Mike.” Micky leaped forward, the hammer he was carrying making Peter flinch, more so when Micky raised a hand to Peter’s face. “Peter, I’m gonna bind your eyes, okay?”

“I…” Peter paused for Micky to wrap a strip of cloth around his head as a blindfold. “Found the drinks, thanks. And have no idea what’s going on? What the noise is? Why you did _this_?”

Mike glared at Micky. He’d been trying to be quiet, Micky…not so much. “Stay in there until we’re through, please, sugar,”

“I have things to do. _We_ have things to do.” Peter jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the bedroom, indicating Hope. “We can’t sleep with this noise.”

“I can loan you my headphones?” Micky offered. “No? Okay. I’ll help you down the stairs?”

“Michael?” Peter queried.

“You can take off the blindfold at the bottom, I guess, if you promise not to look up.” Mike nodded. “Micky, do the honors? I’ll get Junior.”

They made a strange procession descending the staircase, and, once he was again working on the second-floor landing, Mike took peeks down below, catching glimpses of Peter pottering around, the baby never far away.

“Am I allowed on the sundeck?” he called up from near the sink.

“Sure,” Mike called back.

“Wait…” Micky went to peer down over the railing, leaning over so far, Mike had to make a grab for him. “Peter, are you using the mirror to look up here?”

“No… _t completely_.” The last part of Peter’s reply was almost a whisper, his way around things when he needed one, like now when his demand for honesty at all times butted up against his compulsion to snoop. Mike grinned.

“You two go relax outside, babe,” he suggested. “We’ve nearly done, right, guys?”

“Guy.” Micky pointed his thumb at his chest.

“Davy?”

“Sneaked off,” came in a Peter-Micky chorus, despite Peter not being privy to that information. Well, it wasn’t a hard piece of info to deduce, Mike supposed.

He resumed hammering with renewed vigor, wanting to get done.

“I should be the one saying woah!” Micky wiped pretend sweat from his brow. “You seem a little frustrated, if I might make so bold. If you’re taking it out on inanimate objects?”

“Huh?” Mike had hardly caught a word.

“As in ya getting into this out here ’cause ya ain’t getting any in there!” Micky crowed, kicking at Mike and Peter’s bedroom door.

Mike stopped for a gulp of water, half a dozen answers swarming, the leader of the pack a question to Micky about in that case, _he_ should have rebuilt half the pad a dozen times over. _Pick your battles._ Peter was so wise. He kinda hoped Micky had hurt his toe in delivering the kick, though. Mike put his cup down. “I’m making up for being one man down. Where is that artful little dodger? He was here—”

“Yeah at the meeting you called at dawn—”

“Nine a.m.,” Mike corrected.

“In our room,” Micky continued in a whisper, looking down at his bedroom door. “I gotta say, when I woke up with you on the bed, I thought…well…”

“What?” Mike sighed. “Micky, I don’t get you.”

“Too right you don’t! You’re spoken for, mister, and I ain’t _nobody’s_ bit on the side.” Micky tapped Mike on the chest, his downward head nod underscoring his declaration.

“Spoken for? You _speak_ like a loon, boy!” He might not understand Micky, but he couldn’t be mad at him. “C’m on—we get finished, and I’ll give you money to go get ice cream from the trike. It should be coming along soon.”

And he loved how easily bribed Micky was, whereas Davy negotiated far harder before he agreed to take Hope out for a little walk, give Peter a break. And even without Davy’s help, they soon finished. Well, it was hardly elaborate…

“May I?” called Peter, blatantly staring from the bottom on the staircase, then ascending at Mike’s invitation, to stare at the new look to the upstairs landing.

Yeah, hardly elaborate, mainly just a swathe of pink fabric suspended from an old ring Mike suspected was once a candelabra hanging from the ceiling. Fabric that then billowed out and had been tacked down to make a sort of cloth-walled bedroom more or less the length of the landing. Open on one said, the side the top of the staircase gave onto, it was tall enough to stand up in and large enough to house the baby’s bed-pen thing and her stuff. And all while concealing it from prying landlord-like eyes.

“Fit for a princess.” Mike closed his eyes. That hadn’t been—

“You made her her own room?”

Mike shrugged. “Give her privacy, her own space, yet close…”

“Just to get our room just for us again?” Peter twisted to face him.

“No. Well, maybe.” Mike ducked his gaze, twisting his wool hat in his hands in his best ‘aw shucks’ move.

“I understand.” Peter’s smile as almost his usual one. He made his way into their room and Mike followed, his heart leaping in hope, especially when Peter sat on the bed and leaned back against the headboard.

“The pad’s empty now…” Mike pointed out. He wasn’t sure how long they’d have but—

“And you fancy a quick fuck? A quickie, as Davy so eloquently calls it?”

“I…” Mike sat, gauging the vibes Peter was giving off. Swirly and gray and fading to black, he judged, and not in a cinema way, as in before the kiss, never mind the sex scene.

“Because I’m exhausted!” Peter finished for Mike, raising his voice although Mike wasn’t arguing. “Do you know how many times I was up in the night—”

Mike thought he deserved a medal for not leaping in on that and declaring he’d been up all night too and—

“Doing night feeds? Night changes? I came in here now for a rest while I could.”

“I made up a rota of baby duties. Tasks,” Mike amended, in case that first word sounded negative. “We’re all gonna be sharing the load.” And from an obligation to a heavy weight. He closed his eyes again. Maybe he should have the blindfold. And the gag. And not in a good way.

“ _What?_ ” Peter blinked, as if seeing that image.

“I wasn’t expecting— Wasn’t gonna ask—” Mike gabbled.

Peter’s sigh didn’t sound tired. “I haven’t said thank you,” he said. “For that, out there.” It took Mike a second to realize he still hadn’t. But Peter went on. “Just…I don’t know. This is going to need more patience.”

You _have to have more patience._ Mike heard and understood what was being asked of him. And understood how much worse—yeah, he’d use a negative if he wanted—this all must be for Peter, who hadn’t asked for this, expected this…didn’t necessarily want this. Oh he loved kids, but like this? Right now? Peter got prickly when he felt cornered—the patience demanded was over him. Mike nodded and leaned forward to kiss Peter on the cheek and stood.

“Where are you going?” Peter demanded.

“The library, actually. Gonna get some baby care books we can all read, study…” In addition to the pamphlets from the baby clinic. His shoulders sank as he heard the others downstairs. Huh. They’d literally walked around the block. Davy could whistle out of his hiney for a cup of tea in bed tomorrow morning, his demand in exchange for extra baby duty. And as for Micky’s tag-along request that Mike deliver said tea in his tightest boxers, _sans_ robe—the lunatic was lucky Mike hadn’t kicked _his_ hiney.

But he had to admit that Micky’s fold-away baby carriage, a box whose wheels clicked down and folded back up on long metal legs, did the job, retractable roof included. Mike ignored how much it looked like a souped-up futuristic box cart. He just hoped it had brakes. “Thanks, guys.” Mike glanced at the chores chart. “Davy, you’re on lunch, right? I’m gonna go—”

“We’ll come.” Peter scooped up Hope. “Thanks,” he added. “For…everything.” He said the last with his eyes on Mike.

Mike knew he intended it as an apology for just now. “Look, don’t feel you have—”

“To do you any favors?” Peter bristled.

“To make anything up to me.” Mike stood his ground and after a moment, Peter softened and nodded, letting Mike loop his arms around him. That he was holding the baby made Mike squash her into their embrace too, which she protested.

“Here.” Davy finished assembling a mound of ham and cheese sandwiches. His lunches were never very elaborate. “Now, fellahs, what do you say?”

“Thank you?” Mike replied.

“Not to me…” Davy gestured from Mike to Peter.

“I love you?”

“Right. And?” Davy waved his hand from Peter to Mike.

“I love you.”

Mike blinked. Peter rarely said it, in so many words.

“Right again.” Davy’s look read _smug_. “Wasn’t so hard was it? And none of your lip, mate.” He stopped Micky before his riff on _hard_ left his lips. “Bag those butties up.” Startled, Micky did. “Now give ’em that drink you’ve been hiding in the fridge. Yes, I know it’s yours, but stop whining—every time you whinge, a chick out there turns off you. Told you that before. Chop chop. And that bottle of baby milk stuff while you’re there.”

He nodded when Micky handed the soda and formula over. “Oh, apples.” He dropped two into the brown bag of sandwiches Mike held. “There. Take it with you and spend time together.” He dusted off his hands in a ‘problem-solved’ way.

Mike’s thanks were genuine. And if he’d sooner have taken Peter to lunch in one of those healthy cafés he liked, followed by a mooch around his favorite head shops on the Strip before they wandered back to rehearsal and beach time than take a quick drive to the Main Library on Santa Monica Boulevard with the prospect of a homemade sandwich to follow, well, too bad. He nodded at Peter’s suggestion of the park.

Hope felt heavier strapped to him as he climbed the zigzag of steps up to that strip of park that always seemed dusty to Mike, situated as it was along the bluffs between the Avenue on one side and the Highway down below on the other. But it had some green spots when it widened out and climbed higher, and more shade than the beach, which, as always, looked close enough to touch from up here.

They found a spot under a palm tree near the wooden hut things Mike always thought looked like beach huts, in the wrong place. “This park needs more stuff,” he observed. There was a plan to build a fountain, he thought. But it could do with a swing set or a slide or… Ah, right. It was them that would be needing that stuff soon. Like on Zuma Beach. Jeez—only last week they’d been playing on the kids’ park equipment there as they always did on that date, the anniversary of one of their first days out as a group.

Micky’d shot a cine film of their first visit. Pity he’d had to sell his camera. and projector. They should get a new projector at least, watch his movies, if not a new camera, now they had a reason, something to record. He watched Peter watching Hope trying to grab the palm fronds waving above her, using her hands and feet, and passed him a sandwich. They shared the soda, passing it between them, and after they’d finished dessert too, Peter wiped his hands to play his acoustic, for them to work on the tune Mike had been trying to get down for a week or so and that he was trying to think up lyrics to in a hurry, after what Grace had mentioned. His compositions usually came quicker than this, unlike Peter’s, that could be swirling and thickening for years.

But this one wouldn’t be pinned down to the page, not the way Peter’s focus was split between the music and the baby. “Sorry,” he muttered, taking up the guitar again after taking over from Mike in trying to distract Hope, who’d grown bored with her ragdoll and started wailing.

“No, it’s okay. We should get going anyhow.” Mike began clearing away.

Peter shot him a sidelong look, and another when he made a solo detour to the payphone. “What?” he demanded.

“Oh, nothing. Just, I got us a sitter for tonight. Mrs. P,” Mike replied. “She owes us, remember.”

“That’s a surprise.” Peter brushed against him, stroking down his arm. “Surprise…evening out?”

“For the gig! We got three nights a week at the Box now, remember?” Peter must be tired, his brain cotton-woolly.

“What? You didn’t say it starts already, now, this week!” Peter stopped walking.

“I…” He had, hadn’t he? “Okay, so we didn’t have an official meeting about it, but it’s on the calendar. It’s a great chance.”

“But taking her to the Purdeys? That’s going to be so unsettling for her!”

“Well, it’s arranged and agreed now. And we need the money.” He tried not to look at the baby as he said that. At her diapers, milk, clothes, lotions, toys, food, doctor’s appointments, medicines, vaccinations…

“So it’s my fault?” Peter could read non-looks.

“No. It’s a good opportunity.” Mike faced him square on. “Tell me it ain’t.” When Peter didn’t reply, just looked at him, head tilted and face set, Mike sighed. “Remember something you said once? That if this is gonna work, we can’t treat each other differently?”

“No?”

“Yeah, I hardly can,” Mike admitted, making Peter laugh, which thrilled Mike to the bone. “But it’s true, right?”

“Yeah. I guess. I reckon.”

And that Peter was doing his Mike impression thrilled Mike to the core. Warmth suffused him, like the sun coming up on a new day. “Hope, you're gonna have one helluva childhood, being brought up by the world's sexiest goofball, one mean and ornery Texan, a pint-sized Limey Casanova and a cracked Los Angeles loon. You ready for all that?”

Silence greeted this, even the baby in her kangaroo pouch on Peter’s chest stilling, until Peter whispered, “ _Thank you_ ,” without a hint of prickle or bristle to it and, when he wiped his eyes, the watery smile on his gorgeous face was closer to his sunny beam than anything Mike had seen in days.

“ _You’re most welcome_ ,” he whispered back, moving to Peter to walk alongside him, as close as they could get in public.

***

And later, he wanted to get a whole lot closer, never mind they were still in public… But the way Peter moved with his bass like that? Was he ramping it up, his moves one degree above dancing to…humping? And on purpose? Something to do with the frustration Micky had mentioned? Whatever, he looked mighty fine to Mike.

“Michael!”

He caught Peter’s repeat of his name, if not the first go-around. Well, the club was loud and on stage was noisy.

“That new manageress, the blonde—why is she staring?”

“Who, Ricki?” Mike looked over toward the bar.

“Wait. _Ricki?_ As in…” Peter almost stopped playing.

“Get with the program!” Davy advised, shaking his maracas extra loudly to cover any gap and attract the attention of the chick—who, oh Lord, looked like one of the _TripleH_ extras— he’d invited along. “And she’s probably trying to work out what you’ve got that she hasn’t…apart from Mike.”

“ _Oohh._ ” The zinger had Mike wincing.

“I know, you did tell us. me. I guess I wasn’t very present on Thursday,” Peter confessed as they left the stage. “And yes, I know: I have nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Mike grinned, making it as flirty-going-on-dirty as he could. “Because when I get you into bed later, there’s no telling _what_ could happen…”


	20. Chapter Twenty

“Good shower?” Mike asked when Peter came into the bedroom later. He looked good, anyway, better than he had for a couple days. Mike was glad he’d ceded his shower time and hot-water allotment so Peter could take as long as he liked—too bad if the ‘plus one’ Davy had come home with from the Duke Box wanted the bathroom. Mike hadn’t even minded the hasty sluice in the non-suite off their bedroom. He found the station he wanted and finished tuning the radio. “Nice and long?”

“Yes, with water that was really hot for the whole time. Thanks.” Peter gave a one-handed rub at his hair with the small towel. “I hadn’t washed my hair in three days!”

“Well, it’s what happens when there’s a new baby.” Mike indicated the leaflets they’d gotten at the clinic. The top one was about not neglecting to care for yourself as well as new arrival. Okay, it was aimed at wives, reminding them that even though they were now mothers, with new duties to their babies, they must not neglect their responsibility to be looking pretty and fresh in their freshly prettied sitting room when their husband came home from work, but…

“And she is new to us. And she’s fine,” Mike added, when Peter showed signs of turning to exit through the propped-open door he’d just entered through and check the occupant of the newly fitted out princess room. “She did just fine at Mrs. P’s.”

And had come home sleepy from being admired and fussed over _and_ in a new outfit, with a couple of new bottles and toys. Mike doubted Mrs. Purdey had fallen for the ‘looking after Peter’s sister for a little while’ line, but her decency had prevented her from questioning them, apart from asking in a whisper if they had a woman living with them. To which Mike had been able to reply with truth, “No, we certainly don’t, ma’am, and don’t intend to, either.” Her compassion had led her to digging through her daughter Shelley’s old baby clothes and stuff—all preserved in anticipation of a granddaughter—for Hope.

Now, Mike felt Peter’s eyes upon him as he lit a scented candle and turned off the nightstand lamp, weak though it was. “Come here,” Mike said, before Peter could make any comment. He sat on the side of the bed and indicated Peter should squat on the floor in front of him.

“Strange. Not where you usually direct me to,” Peter commented, sitting as indicated, his back to Mike, and handing him the towel.

“Funny guy.” Mike ignored the images that sprang up of him getting Peter into position bent over the footboard, his ass raised just so, just _right_ , right _there_ , or Peter positioned splayed out across the mattress, for Mike to enjoy his entire and entirely delicious body. Instead he dabbed the towel across Peter’s face from behind. “Best I deal first with that smug look I know you got going on there, shotgun,” he muttered.

He set to drying Peter’s hair for him, and had the comb ready, to get the damp and damp-sand-colored strands into shape as he dried. Easy enough when Pete’s hair just fell into place, all shiny and bouncy. Mike wondered, not for the first time, which one of them got more out of Mike grooming Peter like this. Despite Peter’s deepened breathing becoming an almost-purr and his head lolling back into Mike’s chest, Mike thought it was him. He’d always grooved on Peter’s silky hair, from the way it moved to how it smelled, so having permission—having the _right_ —to play with it was beyond boss. He speared his fingers up into Peter’s scalp and let the strands run through his fingers.

“’ _S’nice_ ,” Peter breathed, one long exhalation, rolling his shoulders.

“And when you come lie down, I’ll make you feel a whole lot nicer,” Mike crooned. Peter stilled under his hand and it took Mike a second to understand why, what Peter was assuming. “Sugar, I ain’t about to demand my conjugal rights and leap on you.” He swallowed down the irritation prickling at him…but it stuck in his craw and bobbed back up. “And if I was? You’re gone celibate, or something?”

Peter was on his feet, facing him, in a second. “ _What?_ ”

“Sorry.” Mike closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears, so he didn’t hear that crack. It sounded like the thwack of a baseball—the first strike against him. Or was it the crick-crackle of the thin ice he’d been walking on? No—it felt more like the _crack-crunch_ of the eggshells just trodden on. And a whole box of ’em. A dozen. He was having that feeling more and more.

“It was a stupid joke. A poor attempt at humor.” He stood too. “But I meant for you to lie down and for me to give you a back and shoulder rub.” He let him see that on top of the pamphlets he’d been studying were Peter’s first-lessons papers and notes on massage from when he’d started learning at the skills exchange. It seemed a long time ago now. Mike patted the bed in invitation and raised a warning finger when he caught Peter biting back a grin. “Don’t you dare say it.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Peter replied.

“Or do that look.”

“What, this old smirk?” Peter amplified it.

“Yeah. Well. Jes’ git yo ass on this bed, boy.” Mike whipped off the towel Peter had tucked around his waist and slapped said ass, standing back for Peter to settle down on his stomach. He took the massage oil, the same scent as the candle, from the drawer and took his own shorts off, to get in place halfway down Peter’s prone body.

Okay, so Peter had a point. Whenever they tried this, it was a running joke how little time Mike would last at his self-appointed task. He couldn’t help it. That taut flesh under his hands led down to those inviting butt cheeks Mike could never resist separating, to run a gentle finger along the crack, right down to Peter’s balls before coming back up to stroke around the whorls of Peter’s hole. His hand slippery with the oil, he’d press in deeper and longer until he had four fingers inside Peter and Peter, loosened and aroused, was moaning for him, his body curled and curved enough for him to get his hand to his hard, leaking dick, his movements seemingly as beyond his control as Mike’s were him.

Not that Mike’s were mechanical: he varied things, sometimes pressing all the way in in one long stroke and leaving his fingertip right on the bump of Peter’s gland, a soft but constant and inescapable pleasure-torment that had Peter sweating and clawing at the sheets within a minute, his body one tight arch of tension.

Or Mike would thrust in and out, fingering the sweet spot at the end of each pass, making a shuddering, moaning Peter push back to meet Mike’s caresses over that ultra-sensitive gland, to deepen and hasten them. Or Mike would only press deep every third or fifth thrust, ignoring that spot in the in-between times, keeping Peter on edge until he keened out his need. Which reminded Mike—

“Not just me who goes gaga when we do this,” he informed Peter. “I seem to recall it makes you downright beg for my cock. Well, okay, demand it, more like. You’re real bossy when you wanna be.”

He couldn’t decipher the sound that Peter, face down and already wriggling, made in reply, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that each time ended with Mike powering into Peter, deep and hard and true and wrapping his hand around Peter’s on Peter’s dick, timing both sets of strokes to bring them off together. He always tried to prolong it as long as he could stand it, making Peter stand it too. He was never as successful as he wanted to be, and never cared.

Now, he used his palms to warm the almond oil between them, wishing it was apricot, because that was something he associated with Peter. The scent and more… Peaches were an overused comparison, in Mike’s opinion. Oh, they might be sweeter and juicer and bigger, but apricots were mighty good and had that unexpected tartness to their softness.

“Oh, _reciting_? Is that what you’re saying?” Mike suddenly unscrambled Peter’s request. “Yeah? Need your ego stroked too?” Mike had no problem with either, and began one of his Peter poems at the same time he started a long pass up Peter’s back to his shoulders, making his voice as poetical and heartfelt as the words, shorn of their Latin and country musical accompaniment and Micky’s vocals blending angelically with his, demanded.

“No heartaches felt, no longer lonely,” he began, as if speaking verse, gently squeezing and lifting the thick muscles of Peter’s shoulders. Peter groaned at Mike pressing his thumbs into the upper part. _Trapeze. No; trapezius._ He always got those confused. Mike started close to the neck and rolled the muscles up toward the collarbone for a minute before spreading his hands out to smooth along to Peter’s arms, then work back to the neck again. Peter moaned at that.

“Nights of waiting finally won me…” Mike repeated his along-and-back movement, smiling to feel Peter relax under him. He found a knot and brought both hands together side-by-side for extra pressure, massaging the spot two-handed. “Happiness that’s all rolled up in _you_ ,” he whispered. Peter sort of flopped under him, if that were possible from his lying flat, stretched-out position. Maybe he lay a little flatter.

“And now with you as inspiration,” Mike told Peter, sliding his hands down over his upper arms to squeeze and release there. Peter had been doing a modified neck roll while Mike dried his hair earlier, so without breaking contact with Peter’s skin, Mike managed to help himself one-handed to another splat of oil and then dragged his hands back up to Peter’s neck. Just as Micky loved anyone scratching little circles on his nape, Peter loved caresses there, and now Mike rubbed his thumbs in small circles, working his way upward.

“I look toward a destination…” Strange. Peter was usually humming in pleasure by the time Mike reached the hairline, and emitting that breathy gasp-moan that got Mike extra-hard. Mike halted, but there was no reaction. He put the silence together with that extra heaviness he’d felt come over Peter and had to stop himself squeezing too hard on realizing…Peter had fallen asleep. Deeply asleep. As in, too deep to stir when Mike sat back a little, deliberately brushing his erection along Peter’s crack. Nothing. Oh, yes there was—a snore.  
  
“Sunny, bright that once before was blue? Huh. Not the only thing around here that’s goddam blue,” Mike gritted out between clenched teeth, both hating and glad of the extra slipperiness the scented oil brought to his hands when he inched with great care into the tiny bathroom and took care of himself in cold silence. He’d rather he didn’t have to, but the alternative was another sleepless night, Mike at the mercy of his raging boner while his unknowing, uncaring partner snored contentedly beside him, the sounds, soft as they might be, scraping like fingernails down the chalkboard of Mike’s soul.

“You’re mine in the morning, boy,” he vowed, yanking the sheet over himself, the force of his tug rocking Peter, making him stop mid-snore. Then resume, louder. “All mine.”

***

And yeah, things were looking better the next day, when Mike managed to wake first and got to work on Peter, slowly and calculatedly, making sure Peter awoke as willing and desperate as he was. Only…he was too desperate, too eager to help himself to Peter’s ready and waiting sleep-slackened body, he—they—discovered…

Mike was still closing his eyes and waving cool air onto his blushing-red cheeks in shame ten minutes later, both of which made it tricky to light the gas under the kettle. “Those limeys are onto something with their electric kettles!” burst from him, followed by a yelped, “ _gerargghh!_ ” when he caught sight from the corner of his eye of movement in the den.

“Mike?” came Micky’s voice. “Could ya help me out?”

Out of the hammock, Mike realized he meant. He went to hold it steady, resisting the temptation to spin it over and over, whirling it faster and faster, trapping Micky in it like in a cartoon. At least it’d keep him out of other people’s business. Like now, when the look in his eye said he was gearing up for something.

“Why you there?” Mike tried to get in first.

“Davy’s chick’s in there.” Micky jerked a thumb at their shared room. “She stayed over. But why are you…”

Mike had stamped back to the kitchen by then, averting his gaze from Peter on the upstairs landing. He wasn’t ready for whatever expression might be on his face.

“Hmm.”

Regretting it the second he did it, Mike twisted to look over his shoulder at Micky…in a half-cape and deerstalker hat, magnifying glass in hand that he finished staring one-eyed at Peter through, to turn it onto Mike. “Elementary. I remember you said, and I quote ‘when I get you into bed later, there’s no telling _what_ could happen’. Hmm…”

“It’s not rocket science,” came Peter’s voice from above them.

“Rocket science, you say? Then this is better.” Micky’s Victorian gear was now a lab coat. He looked up and Mike flinched at the firework noise from the landing. Oh no, not Peter imitating a firework, but—

“A rocket! Oh, I _see_!” Micky did a little mime of something exploding upward, up at Peter. “Like, as soon as he was on the launch pad, he shot off into the stratosphere!”

“Micky, you hush your damn fool mouth, you hear?” Mike pointed a hopefully threatening finger at him.

Okay, so it was true and had never happened to him before, as he’d assured Peter loudly, immediately and repeatedly, making Peter ask him if he was suggesting it was Peter’s fault; was he blaming Peter for his lack of control? Mike had said no. He wasn’t blaming Peter as much as the situation. So yeah, Peter. But—

“Just who the hell you supposed to be?” he snapped at Micky. “Einstein?”

With an, “Einstein, nein-stein!” Micky slapped on dark glasses and pointed upward, his head tilted back. “I’m von Braun!”

“And I’m owed tea,” came in Davy’s voice from his room. “And Janice says she’ll have coffee. Milk, no sugar, you said, Janice?”

“ _Janine!_ ” a chick’s voice corrected, her waspish tone suggesting it wasn’t for the first time.

“Janice wants _Janine_ with milk and no sugar?” Micky deadpanned.

“Janine wants coffee and neither of us wants _you_ bringing it in, so do not come in this door!” Davy yelled.

“Mick?” Mike stood back and watched Micky pouring coffee and making a tea and heading for the front door. “Where…are you going with those drinks? Ya got tea in Davy’s cup, coffee in the guest cup, but Davy just said he didn’t want you to open his door.”

“But he didn’t say anything about the window!” Micky riposted, his grin the last thing to disappear as he vanished for the drive and, presumably, the front of the house.

It made about as much sense as anything Micky-related usually did, and Mike had a feeling that as the Sunday progressed, he’d be glad of this light moment…


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

But Sunday was Sunday, and time for their usual ‘maintenance’—Mike had learned long ago not to call what had to be done around the place anything like ‘cleaning’ or ‘chores’ or ‘jobs’. Not that it made that much difference, when the others were always doing their best to duck out of ’em, anyway.

“I swear, if you three put as much effort into doing stuff as you do trying to avoid— Micky, I can see you imitating me!” Mike pointed at the mirror on the kitchen wall that was enabling him to see Micky behind him, mouthing along with Mike’s usual lament as he regarded the household openings chart and correlated it with who was around and what they were actually prepared to do. There was always a gap between the need and the deed.

“Yes, I know,” he pre-empted Davy, saving him having to recap the whys and wherefores of how he was excused. If Mike’s calculations were correct, Davy had negotiated himself a respite from chores until well into the 1970s.

And on that subject, Mike was still miffed it’d taken him a few weeks back when they’d all moved in together to realize Davy wasn’t in fact out of the pad for most of Sunday to attend extra-long Church of England services, as he’d claimed. “And it’s not because you’re entertaining a chick, either. Although I swear I do not know how that caveat got added to the statutes as a bona fide excuse for not pulling your weight!”

“It’s a different sort of pulling, mate!” Davy said, his wink enormous.

Mike shook his head and watched him and Jan-something stroll down to the beach. “Now Mick—Micky? What…” The kid was staring after them, even rushing to the telescope to stare some more.

“She’s _groovy_ ,” Micky sighed, coming slowly back to the den. “A stone fox. A blushing peach. A pink dream. I was smitten from the second I saw her, earlier.”

“When you spied on her foxy, peachy, dreamy body in bed.” Mike stepped back to make way for Peter and Hope. “And, smitten? Yeah, Davy’ll smite you one all right, you carry on like that. Hey, Peter, look.”

He pressed close when Peter came to read the chores list. “I’m sorry,” Mike whispered, pointing his chin upward in the direction of the bedroom, to make his meaning clear.

“So’m I,” Peter replied, and Mike was still trying to decipher his words and tone when Peter turned around. “Surfing? It says I’m surfing?”

“You haven’t been in days.” Mike fought for his gaze not to swing to the baby on the rug. “I’ll watch her.”

“In the garage? With all the tools and chemicals?” Peter’s voice rose along with his eyebrows.

Yeah, car maintenance was part of Sunday, along with upkeep of the pad, review of finances and career advancement, Mike using the day to budget, write material and look for job prospects, along with cleaning.

“It’s okay, I got this, guys,” Micky assured them, winding a folded-in-half sheet around himself and Hope, pinning her to him then starting on the sweeping, singing and dancing as he weaved around tables and chairs. Had it never occurred to him to move the furniture, clean under it? Probably not. But then, this was a guy who’d obeyed instructions to ‘clean out the ice box’ by eating everything that was inside it. Including a clump of dark-green something that was frozen to one wall and that he’d melted free by breathing on it.

“So, you see?” Mike coaxed. He needed Peter gone, and Peter seemed to sense this: his eyes were still a little narrowed as he took his board and set off.

Mike didn’t want to go over their finances in front of Peter, not when the cost of new items like diapers, baby milk, more bottles, more clothes and food, when she went onto it, had to be factored into their budget…which had to be stretched to include it. He doubted he could hide his worry about the additional, increased expense from Peter and oh boy, he did not want to see Peter’s reaction: the tightness to his lips, the hunch to his shoulders, the defences he assumed against them all blaming him… Which Mike didn’t. Well… Much.

“Takes two to tango,” Mike muttered, closing the accounts book and focusing on his lyrics book instead. He’d been sneaking his pencil over to it while working on sums, trying to capture words on paper for the project he was thinking about. And now, he thought an idea for an opening line was taking form, was blooming…

“Tango?” Micky stopped his leaping and swooping with a damp cloth on two taped-together lacrosse sticks, his method for removing cobwebs, dirt and unexplained stains from ceiling and walls and floor, all at the same time, now with added baby bobbing in her makeshift pouch. “This is a waltz! Oh, you’re _writing_ a tango?”

“Hardly.” Mike flicked a scrunched-up piece of paper at the loon, one Micky fielded with his cleaning rod. Some cold dirty water must have splashed on Hope, because she started to howl. The line Mike had been grasping for, pulling closer with dogged tenaciousness, drew itself together like a spiky black spider—then imploded. He even heard the _click_ and saw the smoke, as the words, now just stray letters, poofed into nothing. “Damn!” he shouted, banging a clenched fist on the table and making Hope cry louder.

“Hey, you’re upsetting her!” Micky covered Hope’s ears and wiped a dirty spat off her at the same time. “It’s okay, princess, Uncle Micky’s gonna take you away. I’m building her a little house thing, so she can play outside,” came over his shoulder as he made for the sundeck.

“And you left the cleaning half done. Half assed, to be precise!” Mike shouted after him. “And don’t go using tools with her strapped to you!” Irritated, he snatched up the broom to finish that task Micky had abandoned about two-thirds of the way through the den, if the hide-tide line of dirt gathered there was any indication. Maybe the rhythmic motion would help him summon forth lyrics, especially if he put his harmonica on around his neck, to blow out notes now and then.

“Greatest…gen-er-ation…meet the new…gen-er-ation,” he hummed, trying a finger snap before he stopped, embarrassed at his attempt. It _never_ worked when he had the title in the song, so why’d he think it would now? “Now it’s the great-est gen-er-ation gap!”

“You all right, mate?”

Mike opened his eyes and unscrewed his face to see Davy and Jan-ette? in front of him. He scowled. “How long you been standing there?”

“Long enough to hear you scatting.” Davy scrunched up his face and snapped his fingers. ‘“Culture…counterculture…work… fun…love and peace, man!’ Can’t see that in the Top Forty, meself. Or even going down well in our set.”

“Yeah well…”

But Davy was showing Jan-whoknewwhat out to the side of the house before Mike could explain or justify himself. Oh, so she could shower off the sand and ocean, Mike realized, when he noticed Micky, his building project forgotten, blatantly ogling the girl as she stood under the water.

“Why do I feel it’s gonna be a long day?” Mike couldn’t help muttering, returning to his task. “Heck of a long day. Helluva long day.”

“Talking to yourself again?” Davy commented, sweeping past him to show his chick out. Oh yeah, she’d brought him home, meaning she must have a car. That’d give her a few more points with him. Maybe he’d call her again.

“Plus she put out on their first date. That gives her like, fifty points, but makes it unlikely he’ll call her again,” Micky added, Hope in tow, on his way to the bedroom window to watch. “Unless—”

“—he strikes out with someone else,” Mike finished for him, glad they weren’t still working on the show where the chick was an extra. The dang thing had enough drama in it as it was without Davy's making his way through the cast adding to it. “And stop spying!”

Micky emerged from the bedroom seconds before Davy came in again. “D’you see that?” he asked, slowly, closing the door behind him.

“Nope, wasn’t spying,” Micky replied. “Didn’t see _anything_.”

“That car?”

“Her car?” Mike tried to follow Davy’s words.

“No, that Jensen Interceptor just outside. Mike…it looked suspicious.”

“What? How?” Mike’s heart thudded.

“It was going slowly and looked like it was gonna pull in, park outside the pad, but then when it saw us, it didn’t, just pulled away. Slowly still.” Davy opened the ice box but didn’t rootle around in it.

“Maybe the guy was just lost, looking for the address he was trying to find.” Mike shut the ice box door, mindful of their electricity bill. “This road’s kinda confusing, right?”

“Yeaahh…” Davy nodded. He opened the pantry cupboard and jumped up to see what was in it. “Or it was probably just some chicks after me, right?”

“What, like his fame’s spreading, and the pad’s on some tour route now?” Micky rubbed his hands together, myriad possibilities buzzing around him like a swarm of flies.

“More like some chick’s after him ’cause of the way he treated her.” Mike hoped that would put an end to it. He pulled a half-lettuce out of the crisper.

“I don’t know, Mike.” Micky, as he often did, had turned on a dime and now dropped to sit at the kitchen table, Hope on his knee and his tone serious. “We should be careful. I can’t help thinking—” He paused for Davy’s scoffing noise and his interjection of, “Challenge!”

“Remembering, then, that an attack on Bettina came on US soil? Right here, in fact.” Micky covered Hope’s ears. “We don’t know if agents from the opposition party aren’t around. So maybe we should take precautions.”

Radishes? Why did they even have radishes? Mike focused on the salad ingredients he was trying to make appetizing and made a non-committal noise in reply.

“Like what?” Davy asked when Mike didn’t engage.

“Like…not take Hope out?”

“She’s not a prisoner. She needs fresh air.”

“Which she won’t get in this pigsty.” Despite himself, Mike had got sucked in again. He made himself turn back to the chopping board. Hadn’t he seen pictures of radishes cut into sort of flower shapes, prettying up a plate?

“Hey! Insult to pigs, that is.” Davy grinned.

“Well, we can take her out in a disguise!” Micky’s voice had taken on its ‘brilliant idea!’ intonation.

“What as?”

“A…a pumpkin! No, a puppy!”

“You’re being daft. We have the perfect disguise right there—we should obviously take her out dressed as Mr. Schneider!” Davy capped.

“I’m glad she’s so amusing to you.”

Peter’s voice made them all jump and as one, they turned to see him standing there.

“It’s Micky. Everything’s amusing to him,” Mike tried. He ignored the way that the unzipped, peeled-down top half of Peter’s wetsuit was dripping water and scattering sand onto the newly Mike-cleaned floor and instead approached Peter, holding out a fork with a cube of beetroot speared on one prong for him…which Peter in turn ignored. Mike felt stupid, as though he were a child trying to curry favor with a strange animal or a parent attempting to coax a reluctant child.

“And why are you building a dog kennel?” Peter continued, his voice still biting.

“A _what_? Where?” Mike demanded

“Out on the deck.”

“Oh, well, Micky—”

“I know Micky’s always been wanting a dog, but if he or any of you think—”

“Micky!” Mike had reached the deck by then, Peter, toting Hope, at his heels. “Oh, fuck’s sake, Mick—you said it was a playhouse!” he called to the architect and builder.

“ _Playhouse!_ She’s hardly going to be having tea parties or wanting a reading nook!” Peter held up the not even five-month-old.

Laughing, Davy pointed at the small four-walled and pointy-roofed structure with its cut-out archway for a door. “Just needs her name painted on the front, and a picture of a bone,” he spluttered.

“This is no _joke_.” Peter’s tone stopped Davy’s laughter and Micky’s explanations. “You made a kennel, to leave her in outside? Is that what you all want? Or is it me who’s in the doghouse?”

“Peter, _no_!” Mike hated the way Peter eyed them all, one after the other, and that Hope was miserable. “Look, let’s go inside, have lunch, huh?” He held the baby for Peter to pull off his wetsuit and then managed to usher them all in, away from the kennel-shaped and sized whatever it was, but being inside didn’t stop Peter’s tirade.

“And what’s all that you were saying about she should stay indoors? Which would seem to contradict the outdoor annexe you built for her, wouldn’t you say?”

“Peter!” Mike hated this. Hated when Peter got professorial. “Please. Just calm down.” He placed the baby in her basket, then got Peter to sit at the table. A twist of his head had the others joining him. Mike brought the chopping board over too and tried to throw a mantle of normalcy over things, preparing lunch as usual. “They were just riffing. Davy saw a car driving by slowly and it got Micky on a bug about stuff. Poor taste, yeah, but nothing worse than that.”

“So there’s no…problem?” _No danger, no threat?_ Mike heard. Or maybe he was just filling in the gaps himself. He wondered when Peter had considered the possibility that people—Bettina’s enemies—might be tracking the baby. Might _have_ tracked the baby.

He found he didn’t have a steady enough hand at the moment for the knife, and took up the fork instead, mixing together the different chopped vegetables he’d scraped from the board into their big plastic dish.

“No,” Davy assured him, then the next second grabbed at Micky’s arm. “What?” Micky had stilled.

Micky now stood, turning to the door. “Someone’s coming up to the pad. Slowly.”

Kid had ears like a bat. Mike could hear the footsteps now. “And what’s that?” he asked.

“Something being set down, near the door,” Micky whispered. “A box? Sounds like.”

“Stay here.” Mike threw the order behind him, already on the way to the door, as quietly as he could. If he looked through the peephole, whoever was there, now breathing heavily, would see him. No, the element of surprise was better— He threw the door wide open.

Mrs. Homer screamed and stumbled over the small box she’d set down, letting go of the heavy-looking dish of food she was carrying. She pointed at the fork still in Mike’s hand, that he’d forgotten he was still holding, prongs out, like a weapon, and screamed again.


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

Dropping the fork with a clink, Mike bent low and just caught the glass dish before it hit the deck. “Oh, heh, howdy, neighbor,” he tried, moving back to usher Mrs. Homer inside and hoping that her hand was on her chest because it was a convenient resting place, and not because she was having palpitations. No—palpitations were more Mrs. Purdey’s purview. Oh Lord in heaven, his brain had snagged on Ps—he was alliterating.

“Nice to see you, and kind of you to bring us a…seven-layer salad? With one layer…gummi bear?” He held it up to his eyes and rotated the fancy glass bowl, perplexed. “And another of cookies? And that one Twinkies?”

“And that one’s marshmallows!” A happier Mrs. Homer reached down for the box she’d rested on the step and followed him in. “With layers of cream and ‘custard’ in between.”

Mike glanced up from the Jell-O-with-fruit base to the proud woman. “Uh-huh?”

“It’s to say thank you for Skip! He signed my big poster, and my little picture and my, well…” She cupped her chest again, her expression sly.

“And what did Mr. Homer say about you getting a tattoo?” Micky inquired, taking the dessert from Mike and drooling.

“This sure looks— Wait. _Tattoo_?” Mike looked to Peter for support.

“Yes, it’s tribal.”

“ _Trifle_ ,” Davy corrected Mrs. H, staring transfixed into the bowl. “It’s English.”

“And Davy’s missed it so. And Micky described all the layers…”

“Including the Milk Duds topping?” Mike could hardly look— the decreasing spiral pattern was dizzying to the eye. “But you shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, ma’am.”

“Oh, no trouble, especially not when Skip’s eager to try it.” Her beam was one-part coy and one-part predatory. “The boys mentioned it to him when you were all filming and he said he’d like to taste it, maybe have a photograph taken of himself with it, if the boys took it in for break or lunch or…”

Mike narrowed his eyes at the unrepentant Micky. He’d better not be planning to make this into some magic wishing well, with ‘Skip’ wanting all sorts of things from a better snare drum to a new car. Just as he’d better not be working out how to fake photographs of ‘Skip’ enjoying the bounty provided, and forge thank-you notes for it.

“And I couldn’t forget this little angel!”

Not Davy any longer, but Hope, giggling as she was tickled and stroked. “I made her a dress and hat, oh, and a stroller cover.”

Mike took them out of the gift box and tried to pretend he didn’t recognize the material from the Homers’ drapes and couch. The entire living was all in same fabric— even the wallpaper, making visiting a little disorientating —and that she’d overordered.

“And here’s a rattle for her, just like you play.” This last was to Davy, making Mike have to turn his head away to hide his grin. “They like making a noise, don’t they.”

“Oh they do,” Micky agreed, not bothering to hide his. “Hey, Davy, this is about the same size as yours, too!”

Mike whisked the bowl of dessert away before anyone drooled in it, or Hope stuck her hand in it. Mrs. H couldn’t stay—“It’s _Sunday_ , dears!”—and they’d just said their goodbyes and thanks to her when the door was knocked again.

“Bloody hell. It’s—”

“Loike,” Micky interrupted

“Picc-er-dilly Cir-cus,” Peter continued

“In ’ere!” Mike finished for Davy, pleased Peter had joined in the familiar litany.

“Was that supposed to be British accents?” Davy gave a pitying shake of his head. “I reckon Hope’s version is better than you three’s!”

He opened the door to the vet’s receptionist, who’d also enjoyed yesterday evening—she was a Rico woman, Mike remembered—and also on a thank-you mission. They had neighbors with nice manners who, while they might have initially been worried about the ‘four long-hairs’ moving in, had given them all a chance. And one of whom was now giving them a thankfully less obesity-inducing potato salad, crunchy with bacon bits and dill pickles.

She was pleased to see Hope looking better and gave her some books and diaper-looking pads too—all from the vet’s practice, Mike deduced. Well, it wasn’t exactly a genius-level deduction, with the pet food and pharma company themes to the small, brightly colored hardback books:

“ _Jane Feeds Spotte (Mighty Meaty Meal Mate nutritionally balanced dry food_ ),” Mike read, holding it up for the others to see.

“I heard this one’s better.” Micky showed him _WoofWoof’s First Worming_. “And that there’s a sequel— _NipNip Gets Neutered_. They’re making _that_ one into a movie.”

 _You brought this on us, with that kennel_ , Mike tried to communicate to Micky when he saw _Puppy Puddle Piddle Pads_ was emblazoned on the packet of what he’d thought was diapers. He wondered how many people believed the ‘sister’ story. Because, really, it was strange and unlikely. Why would anyone’s parents ask their son to look after their almost new-born daughter? They’d surely ask the grandparents, or an aunt, right? _We should have come up with a better story_ , he reflected, showing Mrs. Diaz out.

“She’s good!” Micky exclaimed, clapping along with Hope who was shaking a rattle in one hand and making a rubber pork chop squeak in her other.

She stopped, seeming to read Peter’s expression. “Na na?” she asked.

“So we’re a charity case, now?” burst from him.

“Hey now.” Mike didn’t like Peter’s expression any more than Hope seemed to, but couldn’t let this go. “Yeah, we take charity. You got a problem with that?”

“Yes!”

“Then go ask her mother for her contribution!”

The silence that met this clanged jagged and harsh, very un-Sunday-like.

“That’s very liberated of you, Mike. Really!” Davy assured him, jerking his head at Micky to help him set the table. “I mean, it’s usually the man who provides. Like my dad, didn’t want my mum going out to work, you know?”

“Mine too,” Micky agreed. “She stopped making movies and Joan Crawford got a part she turned down.”

“Really?” Davy stopped tipping cutlery into the middle of the table, his method for setting it. “I never knew that! Which one? _Mildred Pierce?_ _Possessed?_ _The Damned Don’t Cry?_ ”

“Sugar-Syrup Cola print ads. In color!” Micky gave a nod of pride.

Mike wasn’t listening. He’d always been used to his mother paying her own way, not relying on anyone. Well, she’d had no choice. And yeah, she’d taken charity from her church when she needed to and given back when she could. “Pete, you’ve said a couple of times Beechwood is like your family. This is what families do—help one another. You, we all, do stuff for them and they, well…” He gestured at the freebies they’d been given.

Peter sat and drank from the glass of water Micky had put near his plate.

“You calm now?” Mike asked.

“I guess.” Peter flicked a glance up from under his bangs. “I just…Hand-outs, you know?”

Mike didn’t exactly know, but caught a glimpse of Peter in Greenwich Village, arriving with big dreams but barely getting by and soon reliant on friends for the one simple meal he ate a day. “I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his voice of the husk it’d gotten. He was: he hated that anything hurt or upset Peter.

“Hey, no! Put that potato and bacon stuff in the ice-box.” Mike held up a ‘stop’ hand to Davy, about to dive in to the savory offering. “We all got dinner at Nyles’ later, so we don’t need a real meal now too.”

“Meaning we gotta eat up this rabbit food.” Rolling his eyes, Davy fetched cheese and the Miracle Whip, something he called salad cream, to add to his share of the bowl of salad vegetables Mike had chopped.

“We haven’t all got dinner at Nyles’. I’m not going,” Peter announced.

Was he seeing Nyles’ invitation as charity, as a slight, now? Nyles had people over for dinner once a month—what people and what dinner would be there was always an unknown factor. Surprisingly, he was a good cook, enjoying trying different recipes…if he didn’t get distracted. Mike tried to restore the balance by having him over for a meal once a month too, or taking him lunch or dinner, that Mike or Mike and whoever was around would eat there with him, if Nyles wasn’t feeling like leaving his pad. Mike actually found his company restful, with Nyles not often being into talking.

“No, I’m waiting for a phone call.” Peter, his eyes on Mike, answered the question he hadn’t asked out loud.

“Oh, who?”

“Stephen.”

Mike got a glimpse of Stephen with Peter, back in the Village together, as if Peter’s thoughts of a minute or to earlier had pulled this image with it, two for the price of one. And they did look kinda like one. Had they looked more alike then than now, meaning their paths had or were diverging? Better not be thinking of entwining, twinning up again, Mike thought, trying hard to keep his views off his face.

“Stephen and or Neil.” Peter poked at a half-radish, examining the zigzag edge Mike had cut. “About some more recording.”

“Banjo?” Micky mimed playing it.

Peter shook his head. “Did that. Guitar. Might come to nothing, but…”

 _He gets bored playing the bass._ Mike had asked him before and he’d admitted it. And now— “You should play guitar in the band,” Mike blurted out. “I can switch to bass. I mean, we could try it, for one set, at least.”

“And how would you manage a whole set?” _Plucking._ Peter didn’t add that last, any more than he looked down at Mike’s right hand, the one with the fingers that he couldn’t bend, or curl properly. He didn’t need to. “You’d use a pick, like on your guitar? Because using a pick on a bass isn’t the same. You can’t play as smoothly with a pick. A pick alters the sound, technique, and purpose of the bass!”

“All right, all right,” Davy said, looking from Peter to Mike.

But he wasn’t done. “You _have_ to pluck or slap, for better control over harmonics and to vary the tone get subtlety, tone and light and shade. You _know_ this, Michael.”

 _And you know you can’t._ Mike heard it as clear as a bass note. “The offer’s there,” he replied, his tone as even as he could make it.

Peter pushed his plate away. “Do you know how much I hate it when you feel you have to throw me a bone?”

“Because you prefer a _boner_ , right?” Micky slapped the table to underscore his wit.

“For God’s sake, it’s the bloody Sabbath, man!” Davy flicked a bit of celery at Micky.

“And this is a goddamn chimps’ tea party!” Mike told them both.

“Oh! Is _that_ why we’re called the Monkees?” Micky nodded.

“No, we’re called that because you make me go ape.” Peter looked about five seconds from pushing his chair back and leaving the table, but he didn’t. He took a few deep breaths in and out before he looked up, and when he did, he didn’t apologize. “We rehearsing? Because if so, why don’t you try the bass?”

Which was as near to an apology as they’d get, Mike guessed, dumping the dishes in the sink and doing a hasty clean around. They were rehearsing and Mike managed to play bass on _Words_ without his damaged finger hurting too much. It was something they’d tried before, a complete switch, with Davy on drums, for Micky to be down front with Peter. “You two sound so good together,” he praised them.

“I sound good with _everyone_!” Micky trilled.

Yeah, the nutjob did.

“Stay as we are for _Mary, Mary_?” Micky suggested. “Peter plays some good lead guitar licks for that.”

 _Oh he does, does he?_ Oh, he did. And Mike’s hand was aching when they’d run through it twice, once for each Mary, as Micky said. He flexed and splayed his fingers and curled them into as much of a fist as he could to ease them.

“Here.” They hadn’t been playing for anything like as long as they usually did, but Peter called a halt brought him a cold compress from the ice box.

“Okay.” Mike accepted it. “You proved your point, shotgun.”

Peter shook his head. “No. You did. Proved it for me.”

Mike stared at him, unblinking, unflinching, until he sighed and his stance softened. “I’m…” He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “You know.”

“Yeah.” Mike reached out to stroke down Peter’s face and cupped his chin. “Look, come with us to Nyles’? He usually has beer. And…you know.”

A half-smile twisted Peter’s lips a little at the joke. “I really am waiting for a phone call. But…we’ll talk later, okay? I’m going to do yoga and meditate, find my center—I’ll be calm by then.”

Mike hoped so, mainly because while he no longer had the thin ice or the eggshells feeling, he felt like he was walking a tightrope instead.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

Mike’s head lolled forward on his neck, the final drop and jolt waking him up from his snooze with a snore-slobber. He hadn’t known he’d dropped off to sleep but now snapped his head back up, and overcompensating, knocked it into the wall at his back. The loud _thud_ echoed through his brain and seemed to ripple outward, filling the space where he sat as he scrabbled to orientate himself. The sundeck. Monday morning. Jesus! As if his head wasn’t feeling bad enough already, heavy on the outside and sensitive on the inside. Or maybe vice-versa, for all he knew.

More _thunks_ sounded: Hope, who seemed to have liked the sound, was bashing her tiny heels one at a time into the wood of the deck she lay on, making a succession of dull thuds. Soon she was beating her small hands at either side of her too, and squealing her joy at amplifying the effect.

“Stop,” Mike begged the world’s smallest and deadliest percussionist. Each hard, dull thump echoed in his brain. “Please.”

She did, a devilish gleam in her amber eyes as she took up her rattle and shook it with more force and making more racket than a tiny baby should have been able to. Mike’s brain, dried and shrunken, rattled around inside his skull, keeping time with the beat Hope set, and hurting whenever it touched his skull.

“Please!” he begged again, holding out a hand for the instrument of torture and she obliged, giving the rattle up to him. A heartbeat later, the glint in her eye set to demonic, she rolled herself to reach for the plastic dog toy she’d also gotten yesterday, and set up an unholy squeaking with it instead.

“Nothing wrong with your hand-to-hand coordination,” Mike observed, as drily as his mouth felt, watching her pass the noise maker from her left to her right hand, perhaps seeing with which side she could make enough shrill noise to pierce his skull.

“Oh, merciful heavens above!” Mike yelped when she managed it. It was never a good idea to start the new week with a hangover, although a lot of people did, he knew. But those people probably weren’t out in the sun, albeit under a sunshade, minding a rattle-and-fake-pork-chop wielding baby, one who was now shrieking her joy. Mike gulped the last of his soluble aspirin and shuddered and almost heaved, then scowled when Hope imitated both. Peter could have let him off childcare duty instead of kicking him out of bed first thing, his lips thin and tight, Mike thought.

Funny how he felt this hungover when he hadn’t been drunk. Okay, hardly drunk. _That_ drunk. Well he hadn’t when he’d slid into bed—after almost burning himself on the sandalwood candle on the nightstand—and had whooped in delight to find Peter naked except for those brown and orange and yellow beads Mike had given him as a giving-it-up present. Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have pointed at them and pointed that out, using those words. _Amanda said it, not me_ hadn’t gone down well as an excuse or cover, either.

 _Wait._ Mike forced his mind’s eye to re-see what it had last night, and his brain to process it. Peter had been dressed…to please Mike. Dressed the set too, with that scented candle: Mike loved sandalwood. His cologne had a strong component of that fragrance and he loved it when Peter wore the tiniest dab of it, like a secret between them…like he had last night. _Oh._

So Peter, his physical and psychological balance restored after his yoga or his meditation or his I Ching or whatever had reflected, contemplated and not just dressed himself or the set but set the scene …to seduce Mike. After the last couple of days, he’d wanted to make things up to him, or even to get them both relaxed so he could talk to Mike, express the thoughts consuming him, the fears he was prey to, the emotions riling him up? Well, whatever he’d wanted or needed, Mike hadn’t provided it.

And so Peter had been lashing out when he’d told Mike to stop Mike to stop pawing him! Because he hadn’t been…much, he didn’t think. Okay, the beer had made him a little clumsy maybe, especially when he was trying to take those beads off Pete and had almost strangled him with them, then got them stuck in his hair. Mike closed his eyes in shame, opening them when Hope grabbed for her rattle again and introduced it to his knee, loudly and painfully. He bit back the words he wanted to loose and reached for her instead.

“Let’s go see if we can spot Peter, huh?” He sat on the low bench near the sundeck railing and lifted her so she could look out too. “There he is. Doing his stretches.” He figured she wouldn’t know the word _yoga_. “And there’s the others playing volleyball.”

The beach looked good and he wished he was down there with them instead of, well, stuck here with Hope. For how long? Like, sixteen years? Until she left home to get a job or went to college? And what about school? Kindergarten? She’d need a birth certificate to attend anything like that, right? And what about when she needed a real bedroom? Would they have to move? And what— His thoughts were running away from him and he took deep breaths and focused on the here and now to ground himself. Those techniques he was learning in his sessions were doing him good. Wait. Had been learning: he’d had to cancel a couple of therapy sessions with all that was going on and the expense that was going down recently…and he’d see if he could cut back to one a month. 

He was glad the phone was ringing, to break him out of that spiral, although not so happy that he had to tell Grace, who was calling, that he was no further on with what they’d discussed at the premiere evening. Yeah, he remembered the timetable she’d mentioned and the importance of getting in ahead of anything official being announced, that they could pull strings. And yes, he really wanted to get them in on it, but the way things were… She wasn’t any kind of songwriter or composer, she reminded him, in reply to his suggestion that she go ahead on her own. “I’ll try my best, darlin’,” he promised her.

“Who was on the phone?”

Peter’s question made him jump. He hadn’t even heard him come in. “Oh, just Grace.”

“Oh?” Peter stood between him at the phone and Hope on the rug.

Mike shrugged. “Just some showbiz talk. Rumor.” About a new show Al was putting together, on the strength of his success with the _TripleH_ Summer Special, this one for older and college-age teens and young adults, dealing with the clash of the old and new generations, so why didn’t they pitch him the theme song? They could play and Grace could maybe sing it with them?

Her idea had been a good one and Mike had agreed right away. So why hadn’t he come up with anything? Because he hadn’t had any long, uninterrupted stretches of time in which he could let loose his creativity and so hadn’t been able to compose anything for a show called _Generation Gap_ that wasn’t lousy and cliched. _The Greatest Generation meets the new generation? For fuck’s sake._ He wiped the anger that he felt at himself from his face and thoughts. Peter could read both.

“Look, about last night,” he started at the same time Peter said, “Were you asleep, just now? You seemed it, when I looked across?”

“Deep in thought,” Mike replied instantly. He approached the two of them in the den, straightening up a pile of magazines on the way, scrabbling around for a subject. “I was just thinking, wondering, if you’re gonna tell your parents now about Hope? Now things have changed?”

Pete eyed him, his look cool. “And why would I do that?”

“Oh, well, I guess it’s normal? Your brothers got a niece, now, for one thing. Oh, I don’t know…so they can have her for a visit?”

“As in, you’re counting down the days until she’s gone?”

“Peter—” Mike focused instead on the magazines in his hands, getting them straight and in date order, newest first. He held them out upright to do so.

“You think I’m _projecting_?” Peter hissed.

“Wha—” Mike followed Peter’s eyeline to the topmost publication, Micky’s erroneously bought Pop Psychology magazine, his cover emblazoned with the _P_ word Peter had just yelled out, this issue’s main article. So that was where Micky had been reading all that stuff he’d come out with earlier. “No, Peter. I never said that.” Although…well, it made sense. And was painful. “Please, sugar. I’m doing my best here.”

Peter’s quiet, “So am I,” sent things from painful to heart-breaking.

Mike dropped the magazines onto the table and grabbed Peter into a hug. After a moment, Peter let him, shifting to tuck his head into Mike’s neck. Mike rested his face on the top of Peter’s bowed head, inhaling that sun-warmed, salt-seasoned apricot scent—no; _essence_ —deep into his lungs. He cradled Peter’s nape, fondling his silky hair. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell your parents. Of course it is,” he tried to reassure Peter. “Like we said, the fewer people know, at this stage…” _And not because you have a weird relationship with your father. And maybe mother, for all I know._

He rubbed Peter’s back with his other hand. Mike was a ‘rip off the Band-Aid’ kind of guy. He didn’t really know any other way of dealing with a wound, physical or emotional, so now, he decided to go for broke. “I wish you’d stop acting like you screwed up and we’re judging you. Criticizing you.” He tightened his hold and didn’t let Peter pull away. Wouldn’t let him bristle or go spiky. Not this time. “What, sweetheart?” He couldn’t make out Peter’s mumbled reply.

“Said it’s hard not to when I feel like one more screw-up now and I’m out,” Mike caught…along with the wetness on his neck that said Peter was shedding a tear. Yeah, in going deep, for the root, Mike had scraped a nerve. God thing he wasn’t a dentist. He’d have been struck off his first day.

“No one feels that, darlin’.” Mike rocked him, just a little and for just half a minute, with it feeling soft and tenuous in a way Mike hoped was like a new shoot poking up from the ground in spring, rather than a delicate painted egg balancing on its stand, before Hope, still down on the rug, yelled up at them, and Peter broke free to see to her.

“So how is it you feel, like a long-tailed cat in front of a line of rocking chairs on top of a tightrope made of eggshells?” Peter asked from the floor where he sat cross-legged. “That’s what you said last night when you came to bed reeking of beer and pawing and biting me.”

Mike hated that he couldn’t get a read on Peter’s mood. Was Peter acting bratty? Not exactly. He couldn’t, not now there was a real brat. He was reading into things, making them worse…and Mike was the peacemaker, smoothing on balm and offering up wisdom? Woah. Did living with a baby make people swop personalities? Oh Lord—which of them had the paternal role and which the maternal? God, this was getting so scary it could haunt a house, as the saying went, Wait— “ _Biting?_ ”

Peter indicated the mark on the place where his neck met his shoulder, the spot where Mike usually nibbled. Usually. When he wasn’t skunk-like in his drunk-like.

“It was just before you said you’d use a rubber, if the reason I wasn’t willing was because I was scared of you getting me pregnant.” Peter’s voice sounded almost casual as he delivered that blow.

“That was a joke. In poor taste, yeah, but—”

“Humor.” Peter nodded and got to his feet, Hope with him. “It seems I missed the funny bit before you got back here, you chasing a car down the street?”

Oh God. He remembered, remembered Davy laughing fit to bust and Micky making _woof_ noises and asking if he’d been turned into a dog—chasing cars was what puppies did.

“Because it was driving slowly and was _gray_?”

Like Davy had said the suspicious car had been. “Oh, well, you didn’t miss much there, babe,” Mike told him.

“I did see Micky and Davy helping you in the door. Helping you not _fall_ through the door,” Peter amended.

“You’re making out like I was commode-hugging, knee-walking drunk! I wasn’t. I wasn’t _drunk_. I can hold my beer.” Yeah, that really wasn’t the point, but now Mike was there… “The beer Nyles had was imported.”

“You said.” Peter wandered into the kitchen

“Foreign beer’s different.” Mike followed him, obstinate.

“You said that too.”

“They measure the alcohol different. I’m not used to it. I didn’t have any since spring, when I played with the Foreign Agents.” He tried not to feel as though he’d walked into a trap. _Sprung a trap._

Peter levelled a look at him after he’d said the last two words, his narrowed eyes saying he was picking his battles, not wasting ammunition on a second skirmish. Mike tried not to feel it was more like a second front.

“But I meant what I said last night.” Peter sat at the kitchen table.

Mike was so relieved to hear Peter’s tone approaching normal that he just nodded. He’d sort out the details later—

Peter tsked. “That you are not to call the CIS to ask about it. Any of it.” He looked at Hope, his meaning plain.

“Because…”

“I don’t like us owing them favors. They…tend to collect.”

“Oh, that’s okay.” That this squall seemed to be over had Mike relaxing, sitting too and leaning back in his chair. He grinned at Micky and Davy, who’d come in and caught that last bit. “Micky’s nuts for all that stuff.”

“Secret agent stuff? Sure!” Micky pantomimed looking all around. “Me and Toby, we were like Steed and—”

“His brolly. Umbrella,” Davy clarified. “And I know which one you were, way your ribs stick out.”

“ _Toby?_ ” Peter sprang to his feet. “You involved her? She agreed? Or…you…didn’t tell her.”

Mike risked a quick glance at the others and hoped he was as poker-faced.

“I don’t want to know, do I.” Peter blew out a long sigh between rounded lips. “I’m trying, but I don’t know if I can deal with much more. Not just now.”

It caught at Mike’s heart. Caught at it and squeezed it hard. “That’s because it’s your me time, Pete.” He pointed at the schedule. “Taking care of yourself, like the books and leaflets say. So go take a nap, or read your book—”

“Or get Davy to do your nails,” Micky threw in. He tended to avenge slights immediately these days.

“Whatever.” Mike elbowed Micky. “I know—” He pre-empted Peter. “Hope needs diapers that aren’t puppy piss pads, and more milk. So I’ll take her to the store.” He took her from Peter, making his action firm and decisive.

It worked: he was out of the house within minutes, steering the jolting, veering baby box car contraption along Beechwood, with Peter’s, “We’ll talk after. All of us,” still buzzing in his ears.


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

Wrestling the jerking, twisting stroller was worse than steering the squeakiest, wobbliest supermarket cart—was that where Micky had gotten the idea? The concept? The raw materials?—and Mike debated returning to take the Monkeemobile or Jeep, but decided against it in his impaired state. Which wasn’t his fault. “Because those foreign loons measure alcohol proof by volume, not mass, overseas,” he explained again to Hope. “All their math stuff is weird there, like how they got those metric centimeters instead of good old-fashioned inches. See?”

He’d expected the fresh air to wake him up but the sun felt too warm and tired him, as did continually righting the listing, lurching baby carriage and checking on its occupant in her barely staying put box. Peter must be tired more, though. Just like he was the most worried and nervous about…the situation. “He gets real insecure and defensive,” he informed Hope. “But I’ll love him through it. See if I don’t.”

Was it the talking or the sun making him dehydrated? He was thirsty when he got to the little strip of stores with its supermarket, where the wide flecked-gray and thin flecked-green tiled stripes of flooring were too defined, the piped muzak too loud and the overhead lighting too bright. He sniffed the air like a cartoon dog, seeking out that rich, dark roast scent tickling his nose. Coffee beans. Oh yeah, that display area at the back where no one went to look at things was now a small coffee bar, its steam-borne aroma wrapping around him and dragging him over.

It seemed to have an all-male clientele. Men, grateful for a respite while their womenfolk shopped, occupied the stools tucked against the counter. Mike, grateful too, slid onto one of the unoccupied ones, inhaling the steam and parking the box cart stroller next to him. “Whatever’s strong and black,” he replied to the young coffee slinger, the place’s newish assistant, Ivan.

Well, that was what they called him. Ivan Awful-Attitude, Micky reckoned his name was. Ivan Eyeroll-Problem, Davy dubbed him. Within seconds, Ivan the Terrible-Employee was sliding a small cup down to him, like he was in a bar, and scooping up Mike’s two dimes, like he was a croupier. The guy to one side of Mike, who he thought had only just sat down, stood abruptly, banging into Mike and almost knocking him off his stool. There was no apology, just the man tutting as if Mike were at fault.

Mike swung his head around. “What’s the hurry, Big Tuna? Heard your wife whistling for ya, didya?” The guy didn’t even look or turn, just walked off. “Yeah,” Mike added. It was getting crowded; there was someone on his other side now. He took an appreciative swig of his coffee, rolling its sharp, bitter taste around his tongue. Fancy foreign blend, maybe? He didn’t care as long as it woke him up. Only…it wasn’t doing the trick. Not yet.

He took another big gulp. The _sissss_ of the machine behind the counter mixed with the bubble of tinned music from above, which was soft here at the back, its occasional announcements muffled burbles. Davy and Micky liked to imitate them. Once Micky had gotten the mic and made his own. _Ladies, it’s everything off today. Puh-lease!_ he’d begged. Mike liked how Mick hung loose. Always groovin’ to something. Once, he…he’d…

“Hey. Hey!” The second, louder _hey_ came with a hand that jerked Mike’s shoulder. “You can’t sleep here, old man!”

“S-sleep?” Mike jerked up, his chin from his cupped hand, his elbow from the countertop. “I wasn’t…was I?”

“Er, yeah.” Ivan imitated him, all slack mouth and lolling tongue.

Mike ran his tongue around his teeth. His tongue felt thick and his mouth tasted weird. “Jes—” The rest of the curse caught in his throat, caught along with his breath, just like his heart seized in his chest, the second he turned his head to the left. Because the box car chassis was there, where he’d parked it, between his stool and its neighbor, but the top bit, the box, with the baby in it…was gone. Mike’s hand grabbed at the edge of the counter to stop himself falling, falling like he was on a broken elevator, plummeting straight down.

“Kid, you see anything, I mean anyone, here, just now?” he gasped.

“Like who?” scorned Ivan.

“I mean, did anyone say anything?”

“Like what?”

“Screw you, asshole!” Mike yelled, jumping down and hurtling away. He was back within a millisecond for the stroller chassis and touched his coffee cup to see how cool it was, to gauge how long he’d been asleep. His brain buckled, trying to reason this, although his head felt heavy. _Someone saw a baby and didn’t see a woman around so assumed the baby had been left. They took her to the information desk just inside the doors!_ Near the doors that were open when he got there…to see the other three just outside, their faces wearing such a variety of expressions that— No, four. The other four. Because—Mike’s heart somersaulted right over—because Hope was with them.

“Mike? What the hell—”

“Happened?” Mike demanded on the heels of whoever had spoken’s question. He shuddered the stroller base to a halt beyond the doors.

“Someone found her!”

“Thought she was left. Abandoned—”

“We saw him coming out and recognized the crib and Hope and—”

“Who?” Mike shouted, cutting off the three-part disharmony.

“Does it _matter_?” Peter shouted in turn, his face red.

“Yes it does!” Mike’s head hurt, but now because his brain was piercing it together. “Because she was taken! Someone _took_ her.” He lowered his voice and attempts to steer the group out of the way of the doors and curious passersby. “Abando—that doesn’t make sense. How could she be when I was right there?”

“But you didn’t see…” Micky’s forehead creased as he tried to follow things.

“No. I was a—”

“ _Asleep?_ ” Peter hissed when Mike fell silent.

“No— _drugged_!” Mike ran his tongue along the seam of his lips from the inside. He could still feel the coating it wore. “The coffee! Come on—we need to get it before—”

But as quick as they barged into the store, it was too late to stop Ivan throwing the remains of whatever had been in Mike’s cup into the sink and running water into the cup itself.

“What was in the coffee?” Mike demanded.

“Like what? Yeah yeah, screw me.” Ivan flipped them the bird, shielding his hand from the other customers farther down the counter.

“No, fuck _you_ , you little punk!” Mike slammed a clenched fist down on a stray saucer, cracking it down the middle. If there was any pain, he didn’t notice it. “There was a guy next to me. And one on the other side too. Big guy!”

“Mike.”

He ignored Davy. “The man you saw outside, did—”

“Mike!”

“What?” he growled at Davy and Micky.

“ _Peter!_ ”

Had turned and gone. Mike caught up with him outside, sparing a few seconds to hold up a hand and scowl at the security guards, making them back off. The glimpse Mike got of Peter’s face showed it to be blank, with no trace whatsoever of any sunny beam, or dimpled smile, or—

“Why are you here?” Mike asked, aiming the stupid question at any of the three who’d answer.

“We just decided to come after you.” Micky jerked his chin at the Monkeemobile a few yards away, Peter’s seeming destination. “Peter said he felt selfish, leaving it all to us, so we should come get some take-out stuff for a picnic.”

“And all drive somewhere nice, for a late lunch.” Davy took up the baton.

At the car, Peter finished strapping Hope in and turned to them.

“Pete, I know you’re mad,” Mike started.

“I’m irritated you’re making up excuses for falling asleep, just like you lied about it when you fell asleep earlier on the deck, yes.” Peter shoved at his bangs. “But I’m mostly sad that you’re so hungover and tired that you fell asleep. And I’m sadder that the reason you’re hungover and tired is you needed to have a few beers to relax…to cope.”

That it sounded so reasoned, so logical, so calm hurt more than rage would have.

“I know you’re trying your best,” Peter continued, when Mike stood, unable to reply. He closed the car door and the quiet finality of the sound galvanized Mike.

“I ain’t making excuses! Guys, think—it doesn’t make sense to walk off with a baby you ‘found’. You’d ask the assistant behind the counter—”

“Even if he’s an idiot?” Micky pulled a face

“Or other people around.”

“Didn’t he?” Davy asked.

“I don’t know! Or a cashier, or, or the manager at the info desk, not take her away!” Mike scanned the parking lot. The big guy to one side—who’d been to the other side, the side where Hope was? Would he recognize them if he saw them again? Had he even gotten a look at them?

“Did you fall asleep earlier, on the sundeck?”

Mike’s gaze snagged on a car moving slowly. A gray Intercept, circling the small lot. Circling and not stationing—

“Michael?”

“What?” He strained to see. The car passed a few spaces. It could have pulled up into one…but didn’t. Tinted glass—

“Michael, I asked if you were asl—”

“Yes, but that’s not important right now! Look at that car. It’s the same one from before, right, Davy?”

Micky made a performance out of holding Davy up to see, and Davy elbowed him in the stomach, to make him drop his arms away. Mike had to battle not to bang both their heads together.

“I think so?”

Mike didn’t let Davy’s lack of certainty stop him. Nothing would have stopped him racing into the small lot and throwing himself in front of the vehicle. “Stop this damn car!” he commanded, banging his hands on the windscreen. Doing so left a smear of blood on the glass—he must’ve cut his hand on the broken china earlier. He hadn’t noticed. He banged harder on the now stationary vehicle. “Get the hell out. Exit this goddamn vehicle. Now!”

The car advanced a sly inch forward, making Mike step back in surprise. He firmed his stance and glared hard at the windscreen, trying to make out the driver. Hat pulled low, dark glasses on… “Open your door _now_.” People were looking, a couple of young guys exchanging glances and approaching. Mike straightened. “I don’t want trouble. I just wanna see your jewelry.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. He knew what he meant, that if the guy had anything onyx about him, he was an Otto sympathizer, but the way it’d sounded… God, if this were Texas, he’d be surrounded by a circle of concerned citizens with their guns drawn at him by now. But here, now, there was just him and the car, in a man-versus-machine stand-off…until the driver revved the engine, a clear warning he was planning to accelerate, and that a human would come off a lot worse when engaged in a game of chicken with a ton of metal…

“Mike?”

He couldn’t spare any time for Micky’s alarm, not when he was unplastering himself from the hood—when had he draped himself over it?—and racing to the driver’s side, to tug at the handle. Locked. “Open up!” he yelled, drawing his foot back to kick. Damn the consequences. He had to see, to know—

“Guys? _Mike?_ ”

He registered that it was a new voice, a female one, but it took the hand on his arm to get him to stop his futile tugging and wrenching and shouting, and look up. “Shelly?” It didn’t compute that Mrs. Purdey’s daughter, Henry’s mom, was here…in dark glasses, a chiffon scarf right over her head and wrapped round her neck like she was Grace fucken Kelly or something.

“Are you working for Richie?” she muttered, flicking glances to each side.

“Richie…your husband?” Mike was lost. “Why the hell—pardon me—would I, we…” He trailed off as, his words or maybe his expression convincing her, she rapped on the window and it rolled down to reveal a man…who wasn’t her husband, Richie.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to the guy, making him whip off his sunglasses to peer at the scene, her and Mike crowding the car, the others just behind, the spectators in the background.

“Okay?” the guy repeated. “As in, not a robbery? Cause this bum wanted my wallet, Shell!”

“No. Just his jewel—” Mike exhaled. “You know what? It doesn’t—”

“This is Lloyd. This is Mike.” Shelly…had been raised right.

“Excuse me for not shaking hands.” Mike held up his bloodied palm.

“You might wanna find a carwash.” Micky pointed at the hood and pulled a face.

“So you and Lloyd are, well, catting around.” Mike belatedly pieced it together. “You leave Henry with your mom and sneak out like a teenager. As in, your boyfriend waits outside our house, say, or even all the way down here for extra cover.”

“And?” Raised right and brazen with it, Shelly signalled for Lloyd to move over to the passenger side so she could get in the driver’s.

“And…nothing.” Mike backed off.

“Nothing,” echoed Peter, already moving back to the Monkeemobile.

No. Mike wasn’t having this. Adrenaline still crashing around in him, he sprinted after Peter and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to turn. “Peter, I…” He hesitated. He couldn’t play the _I love you_ get-out-of-jail-free card right now. Could he? “This is not my fault. Look, I didn’t choose this.” His gesture encompassed the parking lot, the crowd now dispersing after the scene, and their car, with a tiny passenger in. When Peter stared at him, Mike understood. Peter had talked about projection, and now Mike had just voiced the thought beating in Peter’s mind. “But I’m making the best of it,” he added, his voice quieter.

Two winces sounded behind him, seconds before Peter, his lips a thin line, said, “Is not the right answer. Just…as this, the pad, isn’t the right place.” Hope yelled from the backseat and Peter looked down. When he raised his head, his eyes shone bright with tears he wasn’t letting fall. “We’re all trying our best,” he said as if in answer to interjections no one had made. “But it isn’t working. I need to find another solution.”

Mike was so stunned he could do nothing but watch Peter get into the car and drive off.

‘“Another solution’?” Micky pulled at Mike’s sleeve. “What did he mean, ‘another solution’?”

Mike could only shake his head. He didn’t know…and he didn’t want to puzzle it out. But a horrible dark suspicion started turning over in his mind until it took it over. “Come on!” he shouted and started hurrying, then running then sprinting back along Beechwood to the pad.

But a car was faster and when they arrived it was to find Peter and Hope, and Peter’s duffel bag, guitar and banjo…all gone.


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

“Mike?” Micky waved a hand in front of Mike’s face when he stood, unmoving. “Mike? Do something! Say something!”

“ _You_ do something,” Davy retorted, hip bumping Micky away. “Leave him be a minute.”

“All right, I will!” Micky shot outside then re-rentered. “Peter took the Jeep! The Jeep’s gone.”

Davy finished guiding Mike to sit at the table then spared Micky a glance. “That was some sleuthing there, mate. Hang on while I rummage in the corn flakes for your Boy Detective badge.”

“Joke’s on you—I already took it.” Micky stuck out his tongue. “And I cut out the token for the invisible ink pen.”

“That’s why there’s a bloody hole in the box!” Davy reached over and clouted Micky across the back of the head. “That’s on account—I’ll deal with you later. Now, Mike, come on.” Davy sat next to him and rubbed his shoulder. “It could’ve been a lot worse. He wasn’t angry with you, for one thing.”

No, Peter hadn’t yelled, hadn’t accused Mike of being paranoid or negative. He wasn’t mad at Mike, or them. He’d been trying to arrange a nice afternoon out, in fact. “What did he say?” Mike rubbed his throat to get his voice working right. “You said Peter said he felt selfish?”

“Said it wasn’t fair on us, how he’s acting, leaving stuff to us.” Davy frowned, as if trying to recall the exact words, but Mike had the gist.

“Okay, so we leave him to himself now, for a while, right?” Micky looked from Davy to Mike. “Just to get his head together? This was a lot to take in, finding out about Hope. It’s overwhelming, I guess, knowing she needs to rely on him. Means he needs time on his own, to get used to things?”

“Erm, no. He’s bloody Petering out is what he’s doing,” Davy, arms folded, contradicted him.

Mike stared at Davy. “You know about that?”

“Know about it? I coined it! Well, this meaning. Like freak out, Mick. He builds things up in his mind and assumes the worst.”

 _Like I_ think _the worst._ Was there a difference, in their reactions? Mike didn’t know. He remembered Peter’s confession, that he was insecure—

“Only this time, he can’t light out when things get tough. This is his life now.” Davy gestured around the pad, and although it wasn’t clear if he meant Peter’s life was with Mike now, or if his life had…changed, recently, it didn’t matter. “We won’t let him,” he added, his voice quieter.

“Let him what, take a break?” Micky shook his head. “Guys, Peter’s clanked. Bummed out. And he knows it’s affecting his and Mike’s relationship—they need a break before it causes real problems between them.”

“The only _problem_ is that they’re not together!” Davy yelled. He sighed. “Look, Mike and Peter, they’re like my mum and dad were—made for each other. Each other’s one and only. Believe me. I’ve seen enough crap couples and shit relationships to know. Like yours, right, Micky?”

“Hey, not fair! Okay, I’ve had some bum relationships, but there’s time!” Micky protested.

“No, you brain donor—your mum and dad. They were the one for each other, right?”

“Oh yeah!” A smile filled out Micky’s face. “They had something real special.”

“But didn’t you once say that your mum took a break, took you back to Texas? What happened?” Davy asked, his eyes on Mike.

“My dad went straight after her and got her right back. And my sister Coco was born nine months later.”

“Well, leaving out that last part…” Davy rolled his eyes at Micky before turning back to Mike. “It proves Peter’s not making rational decisions right now. And don’t you dare be too proud or too scared or too _anything_ to go after him.”

“I…” _I was panicking about the future, while Pete was trying to come to terms with his changed present!_ Mike got it. “Peter, he says he has to find what’s best—well, I’m best for him, just like he is for me! We’re best! And together…we’re better! So hell yeah, I’m going after him!” He stood and thumped the table.

“Where?” Micky whispered.

“Wherever needs be.” Mike was already grabbing his keys.

“But where?” Davy repeated.

“All the way. Don’t matter how far—”

“No, _where_ , where?” Davy’s gesture encompassed the pad, the neighbourhood, the area…as in, they had no idea where Peter had gone.

“Ah.” Mike sat again. “Nyles’? Nah. If _this_ place wasn’t okay…”

“Start calling his friends?” Micky was on his feet.

Davy shook his head. “They might cover up for him, and we need to know in a hurry. The longer Peter’s on his own with all this churning around… We need to know right now…” He trailed off, looking at Micky who was unrolling a map of LA across the table.

“I haven’t done this in a while.” Micky looked from one to the other. “It’s…I—”

“Ya got moves,” Mike finished for him, his way of describing the, well, _powers_ , Micky possessed. He’d never mock them or Micky for having them, any more than he would pry into them, much less exploit them. _Well…_ “Anything you can do,” he whispered, pulling him in for a hug and beckoning Davy over to get in on it. It was _warmth_ and _home_ and _love…_ but not the same with a quarter of it, of _them_ , missing. “If it’s gonna be okay?” And not leave the kid drained and on the verge of collapse.

“Whatever it is?” Davy added, his face trepidatious.

“Scrying. It’s cool. I just need something Peter handles a lot…”

It was a sign of how serious things were that none of them said “ _Mike!_ ” Micky spun around the den and dashed back with Peter’s guitar pick in his hand. He sat, indicating they should sit too, flanking him, then rocked back and forth, his outstretched hands trembling over the map and his entire face scrunched up.

“Is he having a stroke?” Mike muttered as the rocking intensified.

“More like a number two.” Davy eyed Micky. “Like, he’s constipated and trying to crap.”

“Stroke.” Mike stood by his assessment.

“Crap.” And Davy by his.

Whatever it was, it finished in Micky yelling “Arrgghhh!” and his head dropping forward to hit the table with a thudding _thunk_ , face first.

“Micky!” Mike pulled him up, looking wildly around for napkins or a cloth: Micky’s nose was bleeding, drops of blood spattering a bright red dotted line onto the paper below him. God, Mike hoped his nose was okay, that he hadn’t broken it.

“Here.” Cupping his nose with one hand, Micky pointed to the first red blotch.

“Laurel Canyon? Peter’s _there_?” Mike didn’t question how he knew what Micky meant. What he’d done. “But who— _Stephen!_ ” he exclaimed, at the same time the others did. “He’s rented some house up there, him and his group. Recording there too.” He scratched around inside his brain for more.

“That’s a long road.” Peering at the first red dot in the trail, Davy didn’t question Micky’s powers either. “Which house is it?”

“3169. No, I heard Peter on the phone!” Micky smiled at their awed expressions. “I remember because he made a joke about the number.”

“Oh, merciful Heavens.” Mike…didn’t think he wanted to know.

“Yeah, he laughed and said, ‘What a prime number!’ and then when he put the phone down, he said Stephen didn’t get the joke.”

“ _I_ don’t get the joke,” Mike confessed. “Do you?”

Micky shook his head, spattering a few last drops of blood down his T-shirt.

“3169 is a prime number—a number you can only divide by itself and one. Like, f’instance, seventeen. That’s only divisible by seventeen and one.” Davy looked as stunned as he finished his explanation. “How did I know that? I was excused Maths at school. I did vegetable-garden duty instead. So weird—I’m coming out with all sorts lately. This summer.”

“Since…last month?” Mike inquired. When they’d switched rooms so Mike and Peter could share, giving Davy… _Micky_ as a roommate.

Micky looked too innocent. 

“If I find you switched from hypnotism to hypno whatever sleep programming is…” Mike warned him.

“Hypnopedia,” Micky informed him.

The slap of Micky’s hand clapping over his own mouth followed by Davy’s roar of “ _What?_ ” sped Mike on his journey. He took his bike, to be faster, and only stopped to fill the tank, meaning he was soon weaving in and out of traffic and climbing beyond Crescent, leaving the winding Road for the even more winding Boulevard.

He found the _prime_ address easily enough, and turned off onto the property, riding the short patch of garden or drive right up to the door of what looked like a wooden cabin-style house grown extra big. Had he been expecting some rich-swank mansion? Music and voices, noise and laughter came from inside the house but there was no sign of the Jeep in the patch of grass in front of the place. Maybe there was more parking down the side or round the back, or people left their vehicles along the road, for all he knew. He rapped on the front door, discovering it wasn’t closed when his knock made it jerk open a little. “Hello?” he called, into the hallway, blinking in the shade after the bright sun outside. “Anyone?”

“Someone,” answered a southern drawl and Stephen loomed up out of the half-dark and flung the door open wide. “This one.”

Mike took a half-step back: Stephen was bare-ass naked, wearing only his high-crowned cowboy hat. Mike might have wondered if Stephen’s feet weren’t cold on the cool tile of the hallway floor, or maybe hurting from walking in the garden barefoot, if the dirt on them was any indication, but the way the guy leaned back against the door frame, head tipped back to regard him from heavy-lidded ice-blue eyes told Mike he was feeling no pain.

“Is Peter here?” Mike wasted no time on greetings.

“Nope.” Stephen didn’t either, for all they were both two sons of the south. He straightened, perhaps to get back to whatever he was doing, or perhaps to invite Mike to join in whatever he was doing, but two things had the hairs on the back of Mike’s neck prickling.

One, the music flooding the place changed to a traditional banjo tune, one Peter played…and it was Peter playing! Mike would have recognized his picking anywhere. And secondly, Stephen stepped on something that gave a slight squeal as he did so. A squeak, actually, because the item was…a rubber pork chop, the sort of toy that squeaked when pressed.

Mike glared up at Stephen, his blood banging in his ears. “No? What if I say I don’t believe you?” He pushed Stephen back into the hall.

Stephen grinned, showing a lot of teeth that were even more crooked than Mike’s. “Then I’d probably say, bring it on, hotshot.” He grabbed Mike, pulling him inside the house with him. “Yeah, I’d say _exactly_ that,” he continued, releasing his grasp on Mike’s upper arms.

The way his grin widened even more gave Mike a clue to his next move, as did the way he turned aside to give himself space. Mike caught the fist Stephen swung at him and gripped it hard, then wrenched Stephen’s arm out and up, forcing his body to buckle and twist—or pull his shoulder out of its socket—making it easy to bend Stephen’s arm up behind his back. Before he could retaliate, Mike shoved him toward the wall, making sure to trap his other arm between it and his body, depriving Stephen of its use and keeping everything in place with their combined weight. Mike used his free hand to knock the hat from Stephen’s head. Just because. He didn’t look anything like Peter, despite what people said, Mike decided. His blond hair had the weirdest short bangs, parted in the middle and looking like twin tufts or baby wisps, and his sideburns crept down his face.

“Gonna ask ya that question again,” Mike breathed, pressing in.

“Hey…” came a voice behind them, a male voice Mike didn’t recognize. Not slackening his grip, he turned to see a guy he remembered from the recording session, tall, with a thatch of coarse brown hair. He was even more wiry than Stephen but equally as naked. “Everything cool?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” Stephen threw over his shoulder. “Real groovy. Except I want my hat, man.”

“Sure.” The guy retrieved it and replaced it on Stephen’s head. Mike didn’t let up his hold.

“Thanks, Neil.” Stephen gave a shake of his head to settle his hat.

“No sweat, man.” Flashing a peace sign, Neil ambled back toward the music and laughter.

“They don’t use sarcasm where he’s from?” Mike had to ask.

“What sarcasm? I meant it!” Stephen’s laugh ripped through the hallway. “I’m _digging_ this stand-off we got goin’ on.”

“How, how is this a stand-off? You’re slammed up against a wall butt-naked!” Mike exclaimed.

“So I am. And you wanna know the difference between us?”

“I’m not slammed up against a wall butt-naked? Okay, I’ll bite. What?”

Stephen’s chuckle was raw. “You’re an ornery sonuvbitch, but I’m one crazy mothafucker.”

Mike thought about it, then dropped Stephen’s arm and moved away, not turning his back on his ex-prisoner. Stephen shook out his arm, then held out its hand for Mike to shake. Mike took it, somewhat gingerly, remembering the guy’s iron grip. Stephen shook his hand then caught him by surprise by yanking him in close. Very close. He did nothing else. Just waited, still, nose to nose with Mike.

Mike looked him up and down from the crown of his hat to the tips of his grimy toenails, lingering in the middle. He allowed a smirk to curl one side of his mouth. “Funny. I thought you were…bigger,” he commented and Stephen’s recoil allowed him to pull free and save face that he’d done so.

“I’m a grower, man!” Stephen protested, flinging his arms wide. “And I ain’t got no complaints so far. Peter—”

 _Oh._ Mike had supposed, after seeing them together when he’d come to visit Peter at the pad that time, not long after he’d gotten into town. Relocated from the Village, where they’d shared an apartment…and more. He’d suspected, yep, but just hadn’t wanted to think about it.

“Ain’t here,” Stephen finished. And people thought Mike was a cool hombre. “We’re listening to the tracks we cut. You wanna—” Stephen read Mike’s face. “You lost Pete? He okay?

“Yeah.” Mike hoped.

“Why d’you think he was here?”

“Because…” _Micky had a nosebleed_ didn’t seem right. “That.” He pointed to the toy…just as a small, elongated light-brown and cream dog, looking very grand and elegant with a red bow around its neck, came and picked the object up and bore it off, making it squeak more than Hope had ever managed.

“Right.” Stephen nodded as if it made sense to him.

“Can I use your phone?” Mike asked.

“That all?”

Mike was still puzzling over that as he called the pad. “Davy! Peter’s not here.”

“So it’s the _other_ end of the trail.”

“Wh – Oh!” Micky had left a short row of dots! “Which is?”

The address Davy recited meant nothing to Mike, but the location, Atwater, just at the end of San Felix, sounded not unfamiliar. “Who lives there?”

“Tish and Leona. The other two thirds of Blossom.” Micky had taken over the receiver. “Where Peter—”

“—used to crash. I know. Thanks. And good work, both of you.”

“Hey.” Stephen was lounging against this door too, as Mike hung up, the chick Mike remembered from the studio tucked under his arm, a lot more naked now than she’d been then. He offered Mike the joint he held, and Mike shook his head. “When you got this done, we should go for a drink,” Stephen said.

“I’d…like that,” Mike found himself replying, and meaning it. Stephen’s description of them snagged at him and seemed apt: what a crazy sonuvabitch day this had turned out to be, and it was far from over yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is dragging on so...


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

Aching as he was to be back with Peter, Mike couldn’t help wishing the journey from the canyon to just over the Los Angeles river took a little longer than the quarter of an hour he’d been riding—he didn’t know what to say to Peter when he saw him.

 _Maybe he’s not here, either_ , Mike thought, slowing in the small neighbourhood that reminded him a little of Venice Beach. _Just because Micky bled here on the map, don’t mean—_ The Jeep. Willy, Amanda called it, and there it or he was, stationed right outside a boxy-looking house. Two apartments, he discovered, leaving his bike next to the Jeep and trying to find the door. Round the side and up some stairs, in the middle of a railed-off balcony.

A woman opened the door at Mike’s knock and he fought to put the correct name to the face. Damn. All three band members of the R&B band dressed alike on stage and off, if the socializing was connected to their music careers. Leona wore her hair extremely relaxed—which had always struck Mike as the wrong term for straightening—while Tisha wore wigs on stage. Tisha was shorter and wore higher heels for performing, to bring her up to the others’ heights, but this woman was barefoot, providing no clues. Mike assessed the curliness of her hair, and her height relative to his—

“Hey, Tisha.”

“Hi, _Mikey_.” The emphasis on his name and the sardonic twist to her lips said she hadn’t missed his struggle. She patted his back as she hugged him. “I’d give you a lollipop, but you just lost me a dollar.”

“Huh?” was all Mike could manage.

“Yeah. I betted who came here next for Petey would be the baby’s mom.”

“And I told you that wasn’t logical.” Leona joined Tish. “Mike. Nice to see you.” She folded him into a hug too. She was the most formally dressed of them all.

“I’m sorry to barge in like this. Were you…at work?” And been called away, because Peter—

“I finished. It doesn’t take me long to do payroll for Talent Records.”

That was Blossom’s record label, Mike knew, the very small subsidiary of a major, LA’s answer to Motown. And as Micky had said, _if that’s the answer, what’s the question?_ Leona was something to do with accounts and did bookkeeping for local businesses too, Mike half-recalled. He watched the two women exchange a look, communicating without words.

“I know Peter’s here,” Mike said.

“For a white guy, y’all ain’t so dumb,” Tisha retorted.

“Leticia!” Leona scolded. “Okay. So seems I get to play the heavy, Mike. The emotional heavy, telling you that Peter’s hurting and feeling, and needing?”

“No. You don’t have to say. I know. And I’m here for him to talk about his feelings and needs and do what it takes to give him what he needs so he never has to never hurt again.” Mike hardly knew what words were tumbling from him, but he meant every one. “I… Oh.” Mike looked from one woman to the other. “You know we’re—”

The rise of Leona’s already arched brow and slight roll to her eyes meant there was no need to finish his sentence.

“Petey’s always got a room here for whenever and however long he needs it,” Tisha chimed in.

“What’s that got to do with anything, girl?” Leona regarded her.

“I don’t know. Just thought I’d say it.” Tisha shrugged.

“I’m glad about that. I’m glad he’s got you.” Mike hadn’t known he was going to say that, either, until he did.

“Oh fu—phoey! Don’t you go making me cry, Mikey. Think these wingtips gonna survive salt-tears?” Tisha got a finger to the corner of her eye and the sweeping line of kohl there.

“The stuff you use to paint hem on, they’ll survive a tidal wave,” Leona assured her bandmate.

It didn’t escape Mike that the ladies, warm and welcoming as they had been, hadn’t invited him into the main room this small entrance space led into and, more, were forming a barrier in front of him. “Please, Leona, Tisha,” he started. “I really need to speak to Peter.”

“It’s okay.”

Mike’s shoulders sagged in relief at hearing Peter’s voice. The human barricade in front of him parted and Peter stood there. “More than okay,” Mike blurted, drinking in the sight before him.

“Yes. I need to talk to Michael too,” Peter assured his look-outs.

“Hmm. Well, how about we take the little lady…”

Hope protested when Tisha took her from Peter, cawing out, “Ma ma!” while shaking her head in denial.

“Here.” Leona had better luck when she took her in her turn.

“Take her downstairs to visit with Old Ma Harris?” Tisha continued. She stroked a finger down Hope’s cheek. “She’s more your color, girl.”

“And she’s been rubbernecking since Pete arrived. We better go put her out of her misery,” Leona added.

“Wish we could.” Tisha’s mime made her meaning clear.

“How long will you need?” Leona swung her gaze from Mike to Peter.

“ _Lee-Lee!_ ” Tisha mock-scolded, as if her friend had asked something dirty.

“We can take her to the little park after,” Leona continued, ignoring Tisha’s pursed lips and wagging finger.

Mike tried to answer, tried to look at the speaker, but his whole gaze was full of Peter, his total attention captured by him.

“We’ll take her to the park,” Leona answered herself. “Grab her bag, T.”

“Aye aye, cap’in.” Tisha bent to scoop it up, and winced as her getting near had Hope squirming away. “Oh, she’s foreign, right?” She pointed a thumb back at Hope.

“I don’t know.” Leona looked confused. “Is she?” she asked.

“A little,” Peter answered, his eyes still on Mike.

“No, a _lot_. I know because I get that from foreigners. They _never_ know how to react to me.” Tish pouted into the mirror near the door, smoothing on lipstick as she stepped into her shoes. She waved over her shoulder as the three left.

Alone with Peter, Mike took a breath and looked around the room for guidance, maybe, or strength, perhaps. His gaze caught on the small display of records on one wall—Blossom’s singles to date. The group wrote their own material, he knew, Leona insisting on it, as she did on managing them, wanting as few other people as possible to make money off them. Peter had helped them compose one of their singles and hadn’t taken credit for it, Micky had told Mike once. _Sweet Prince_. The B side to _Love in a Million_.

“Michael?” Mike’s sweet prince sat, cross-legged at one end of the sofa, making Mike’s heart pang: that was how they’d used to sit, one at either end of their couch, Mike longing to be closer, to feel Peter’s warmth and strength and promise next to him…until that day Peter had taken that leap, crossed that divided, making them into MichaelandPeter. “Please don’t pace about,” Peter now asked.

He hadn’t been aware that he was, but stopped. It wouldn’t be right to sit close to Peter, not here and not now, and he couldn’t return to the loneliness of his separate corner, so dropped to sit on the floor, in front of Peter.

“You came to speak to me?” Peter prompted, when Mike still scrabbled for words.

“I was wrong.” Mike held up a hand to stave off any interruption. “I was telling myself and you that I still loved you in spite of everything. That I could put up with anything, because I loved you. That was wrong.”

“Michael?” Peter shrank into himself.

“Peter, I love you— _all_ of you— _because_ of everything! It’s not a matter of _despite_ stuff, not a question of dealing with parts of you—I love the whole of you!” burst from Mike.

“Oh!” Peter blinked and unfolded his arms. “I… Just, you normally make longer speeches.”

“I’m normally trying to work something out, or convince myself of something as I speak,” Mike admitted, welcoming Peter’s helping hand pulling him up to his rightful place by Peter’s side. Close by Peter’s side. As close as Mike could get. “But I know exactly what I mean this time.” He gave a crooked smile as he stroked down Peter’s face. “Don’t mean I ain’t scared this time too, though.” Because he was. The slightest prospect of him losing Peter terrified him.

Peter turned his face to kiss Mike’s cupped hand. He tried a smile, but Mike could feel it wasn’t sticking. He slipped his hand down to cup Peter’s chin. “ _Anything,_ ” he reminded him. They could tell each other _anything_.

“I’m scared too,” whooshed from Peter. “It’s not that I want things my way and I’m sulking if they aren’t—”

“No one said that.” That _someone_ had struck him. “ _We_ never said that,” Mike self-corrected. He’d bet it’d been Peter’s father. 

“What do you say, then?” Peter’s retort held the truculence borne of defense that had been powering his speech lately. Lately as in A.H. After Hope.

“I say…that something going on that’s out of your control and you don’t know how to deal with things, and you’re kinda taking your issues out on the others, there, babe—the people nearest to you.” Before Peter could rattle off a reply, Mike looped both arms around him pulled him close. “Gonna turn the tables a little and get you to breathe with me, okay?” He didn’t wait for agreement or argument, just took in a deep breath and by the time he was on his second, Peter had joined him, his breathing synced to Mike’s, his eyes, the warmest and nicest toffee brown, glued to Mike’s.

“I feel overwhelmed,” Peter admitted, his voice quiet. “Un-northed.”

“Dis…orientated?” Mike queried, after a second’s puzzling.

Peter’s face looked more impish-pixie than it had in a while. “Only in English. In all other languages that I know, the expression for having lost your bearings is that you lost your north, not your east. Neat, huh?”

“Real neat. Yeah. And I guess whatever you call it, we’ve been going about this the wrong way. Looking at it, thinking about it the wrong way.” Now Mike was figuring it out as he spoke. He shook his head to tell Peter hold on, he was getting there. “Remember when we talked about, well, having children?”

“Being responsible for someone else. You called it that, and said that you weren’t ready.” Peter delivered the answer with a readiness and speed that said he’d been brooding over it.

Mike caught the echo of his words “ _I…I’m too selfish, babe. Taking physical care of and responsibility for someone else?”_ And they made him laugh. “Not only am I ready, I’ve been doing it for a while! What, you think Micky and Davy are bringing themselves up? I still have to remind Micky to shower _and_ check behind his ears, make sure he washed them!”

“And Davy?”

“Think he’d eat decent if I didn’t make him? No, he’d live on tea and toast, and chips and candy, and spend all the grocery money on face cream and cuticle treatments and…” They were both laughing too much to go on. “I’m happy to take on one more, darlin’” Mike assured Peter. “Least she won’t answer back. Well, much.”

‘“You’re…paternal, Michael. A natural father.”’ Peter repeated words he’d said then.

“And like I said, you’re nurturing. So we gotta play to our strengths, do this thing right. Do it best.”

“And you’re fine with sharing me?”

“ _I’ll_ _probably be as jealous as hell that you weren’t just for me, but I guess it’s about the only way and the only other person I could ever share you with.”_ The words he’d said rang, and he shook his head to stop the sound waves. “No. No, Peter—” He grabbed for Peter’s hand. “That was wrong too. Not the right way to look at it. It’s not you splitting yourself in two to be with me and her. It’s us both being there for _her_. And you’re not forcing anything on me or wrecking anything we got. We got more for us to love now!”

“ _Love._ ” Peter’s whisper was cobweb-soft and spun-fragile but Mike caught it.

“Oh yeah. I know you know this but I like telling you.” Mike cleared his throat and puffed up his chest, wheezing as Peter’s knocking him in the chest for his pomposity made him gasp out the deep breath he’d just taken. “I love you every part of you, from your shiny-haired head down to your long, sexy toes, and all the, erm, _parts_ in between.”

“Tell me one thing. Something I don’t know.”

Peter needed compliments, reassurance. Whatever. Mike thought for a second for something he might not have mentioned. “I love how you look up from your book when I’m coming to bed. Ya give me this look…” He tried and abandoned it. “It starts all doe-eyed and innocent then gets hotter and sexier by the second and you lay your book aside and…”

“And?”

“You tell me one.”

Peter gave him a different kind of look at that order, but Mike liked all Peter’s looks, so it didn’t faze him any.

“Well, you love me at night and I love you waking me in the early morning.”

“Go on.” Mike fought a shiver: Peter had deepened and extra-velveted that soul-stroking baritone of his. It was a _goddam_ purr, for Christ’s sake!

“I know you start stroking me when I’m asleep—”

“Just as I know you pretend to be asleep. But go on?”

So Peter did, whispering right into Mike’s ear how it felt when Mike lay behind him, pressed tight against him, his hand sneaking over Peter’s hip and coaxing Peter erect—not that it took much, Mike had to interrupt—and doing _that_ thing with his thumb on _that_ patch just underneath the head of his cock, _that_ thing that had Peter gasping and moaning, his back arching and his hips pumping. Then when Mike slid his thumb up to do that _other_ thing—

“Rubbing over the head of your cock?” Mike had to break in. He was proud of that move, how he used the calluses on his thumb to good effect.

Peter gave a slight nod, his lips parting and his pupils enormous with arousal. “And all the time rocking into me, your dick harder with each rock, or so it feels, the head just there…”

“Just right…where you want it.” Mike barely recognized his own voice.

“And the way you slip your hand off me, when you’ve gotten enough pre-cum…to use as lube.” Peter swallowed, his voice roughening in tandem with Mike’s. “And you’re quick and clever, using it to get me prepared to take you. Fingering me open, if I’m not still open from you fucking me the night before. And then you’re ready, you power in hard, your hand back on my dick, working me harder, and that wakes me up, so I wake up _coming_ , for God’s sake, with you still forcing your way deep inside me and, Michael, you’re so big and thick and—”

Their lips crashed together, although Mike couldn’t have said which of them had moved. Both probably, and at the same time. He slanted his mouth over Peter’s as Peter opened his to him, the glide of their tongues becoming a twist, then a tangle…and a battle. Only, in this skirmish, they were both winners.

“Jesus, Peter!” Mike almost-squeaked when they broke apart, panting. “That room you got here, you better take me to it right now, you hear?”

Peter was already on his feet, tugging Mike to his. “Oh, I hear.”


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just smut, I'm afraid.

_Hear and obey._ But Mike didn’t have time to make the joke, not when, still kissing him, Peter nudged him down the short corridor off the other end of the living room into a tiny office-type room where Peter’s things sat on the single bed. Backing Peter up against the slammed-shut door, Mike took Peter’s mouth while he pulled his shirt from his pants with one hand and tried to open its buttons at the same time with the other.

Oh, Peter was no innocent bystander, however his description of Mike arousing him while he lay sleeping all unknowing and unwitting in the early morning sunlight might have made him sound. No, he gave back as good as he was getting, the force of his kisses tipping Mike’s head back and him grinding his crotch into Mike’s stopping Mike going for Peter’s belt buckle, as off-center as always. The sheer _Peterness_ of that tiny, perfect detail Mike hadn’t known he’d missed in the hours they’d been apart but did now he was up close and personal with it again made his breath catch and his hand tremble.

“Michael?” he thought Peter was trying to say without taking his mouth from Mike’s. Mike caught on that Peter thought he was being too slow: Peter almost straddling him cued him in. He slipped his arms around Peter’s waist to lower him to the floor. The change in position and pace meant Mike could finally slide Peter’s shirt free, baring that chest he loved to stare at and caress. Peter’s hands knocked his away from his own buttons, and his long fingers smoothed Mike’s shirt off too. Peter’s stare homing in on Mike’s pelt made Mike grin and he scratched his fingers through it, doing his best Texas wildcat growl.

Peter pushed him flat to ease on top of him, purring his own pleasure at the friction of Mike’s chest hair against his skin. Mike gave him a few seconds then surged up and down—down to the floor with Peter under him. If Peter thought he was getting everything his own way…he was right. He’d probably orchestrated every move Mike had made so far, and Mike loved him all the more for it.

He held him flat, caressing a hardening nipple with his fingers, to tackle his belt and button fly. “Ohhh,” Mike breathed as a couple of buttons being flicked open showed him Peter wasn’t wearing briefs. “Ready and waiting, huh?” He yanked the rest of the buttons open and bent to lick the glistening head of Peter’s cock that sprang free, wasting no time before he arrowed his tongue tip into the slit, wanting to release and taste Peter’s precum. And if had Peter shuddering and moaning under him, well, that was a beautiful bonus.

“Michael!”

From Peter’s tone, it wasn’t the first time he’d gasped Mike’s name. When Mike looked up, Peter gestured to him, and Mike understood. He reluctantly pulled away to strip his own clothes off. He was wearing underwear and socks and shoes, unlike Peter, so it took him longer, but he was soon on his knees, tugging Peter’s pants all the way off. Peter was a genius—Mike had never doubted that—and this latest idea, getting them naked, meant Mike could press the full length of his body on top of Peter’s, leaving him moaning when their erections ground together. Or maybe that was Mike. He always loved that first touch, the first sensual drag of Peter’s rigid cock over his.

He straightened up for another kiss but the look in Peter’s eyes halted him. _Humbled_ him. No one had ever looked at him in the way that Peter did, as if he saw something no one else did or had, something that made Peter want him. It was a longing and a liking and a loving, and it turned Peter’s eyes as velvet brown as his voice became…on certain occasions. It had taken Mike a great effort to meet that gaze, the first couple of times. He hadn’t felt worthy. Now, though, he wanted to bask in it and do whatever it took to earn it.

He pressed his lips to Peter’s, stealing the kiss he’d come to claim, then dipped lower to lick over the mark he’d left at that spot where Peter’s neck met his shoulder, whispering his apology into Peter’s flesh there. Feeling more atonement was called for, he trailed his mouth over Peter’s chest to seek out and lick his nipples and flick at them with the tip of his tongue. Sometimes it made Peter react…and this time, Mike blowing over the wetness he’d left, made Peter _squirm_. Him pinching one, increasing the pressure of his finger and thumb, had Peter’s hips bucking into Mike.

“Better stop,” Peter hissed. “Don’t want to come so fast.”

“Sugar, I ain’t far off blowin’,” Mike assured him, his accent thickening under the force of his desire. Hell, his blood felt thicker, lying here like this with Peter. It slowed in his veins like molten desire. “See?” He proved his words to Peter by taking both their cocks in one hand, pumping them with long, deliberate strokes that had Peter clinging to him, his arms around Mike’s neck, grinding against him and his lips searching for Mike’s to meet in a dizzying kiss, one Peter broke.

“Let me,” he murmured, and of course Mike did. Would, anything. This anything was Peter shifting, to lie on top of Mike, dropping kisses on his face that made Mike giggle: Peter was aiming for his moles, just as Mike liked to poke the point of his tongue into Peter’s dimple, and stroke the flat of his tongue over Peter’s button mole, on his lip.

“ _Unfair,_ ” Mike moaned when Peter sucked on the hollow beneath his throat before moving down to take each nipple in his mouth, one at a time, his slow licks and sharp bites pushing Mike into an overdrive of want and need. He couldn’t stop his body bucking when Peter trailed his mouth down, down, dipping his tongue into his navel, making him writhe with anticipation. Peter paused, looking up at him, those beautiful brown eyes sly and knowing, so Mike understood where Peter had halted wasn’t his final destination. But knowing that and anticipating what was to come were all fine in theory, but in reality, when Peter encircled the head of his painfully throbbing shaft, Mike thought he might just come where he lay.

“Pete…” he gasped, trying to signal, and damn if Peter didn’t…misinterpret his gesture. Least, he shifted too far, not just off Mike but around, bringing his full, fully erect cock a tantalizing inch from Mike’s mouth. Mike got the message and didn’t hesitate, gripping Peter’s erection at its base, enjoying the hiss of pleasure this elicited, before snaking his tongue up the hot length to devour the head, and relishing the groan _this_ elicited. Peter might have had sixty-nine in mind, but the pleasure Mike was bringing him threw him totally off his stroke. As much as Mike would have liked Peter’s mouth on him at the same time as he sucked Peter’s dick, he liked rendering him helpless like this.

Mike inched himself into a better, stronger position, one that allowed him to drag his lips up and down Peter’s hard flesh while he teased his balls. He paused sadistically at the whimper this wrung from Peter and would have asked him in all mock-innocence if this was okay, if he was fine with this—if he’d been able to. He thrust his hand up toward Peter’s mouth and Peter caught it and caught on, tonguing Mike’s fingers, wetting them enough for Mike to stroke his forefinger around the rim of Peter’s hole, teasing him, before pushing inside. The shudder that Peter gave around Mike’s intrusive finger racked his whole body.

Mike let Peter’s cock slip from his mouth. “How often?” he husked. Peter would understand what he was asking: how often he wanted that sweet spot deep inside him touched. Every stroke, or—

“Up to you,” Peter gasped.

“Gonna regret that,” Mike retorted.

Peter’s reply of, “Never,” stroked a thrill down Mike’s spine. Peter trusted Mike to bring him pleasure, to take him to the limit…and push him beyond. Like now, slowly and deliberately nailing that bump of nerves for long, long seconds with every thrust of his finger, and wringing a chorus of whimpers and sighs from Peter. The sweetest music, just as the rush of pre-cum this released was the sweetest taste.

“Ready for me?” Mike whispered.

“Since the moment I saw you. That Monday morning two years ago,” Peter got out.

“Wise guy, huh?” Mike upped the pressure of his stroke, turning Peter’s squirm into a writhe.

“You’re good with your hands. I give you that.” Peter arched off the floor. “But better than with your cock?”

Mike chuckled at Peter’s attempt to set the pace. Shotgun liked to call the shots. Well, try to. “Bossy little brat.” He slid his finger free. “But so happens I ain’t ready yet.” Oh, the look on Peter’s face when Mike flipped him over onto his stomach, and the way he shivered under the line of kisses Mike dropped down the length of his spine—to finish at the cleft between his ass cheeks. Peter’s sudden stillness told Mike he knew what was coming.

“Yeah, told ya it’d been a while since I rimmed ya,” Mike reminded him, before circling Peter’s tight hole with his tongue, slapping his toned ass in counterpoint as he did so. He laved that tempting pucker with long, sensual swipes of his tongue, pushing the tip in, probing and sucking while Peter writhed then bucked under him. “Since you’re reacting so nice, gonna give you more…”

Peter’s moan was long and loud when Mike added a finger alongside his tongue, pushing in enough to stroke that spot that had Peter not just whining and bucking, but clawing at the rug under him. “Good for ya?” Mike whispered.

Peter tried to turn his head to look at Mike and mostly managed to, just as he mostly managed a nod.

“Can’t hear ya.” Mike stilled, just a little.

“Yes!” hissed out of Peter. “God, yes!” He collapsed back down.

Mike was glad Peter couldn’t see his smirk. “Ready?” he asked. “Or d’you wanna fuck me?” Because Peter needed to re-stake his claim, know Mike was his, just as much as Mike did him.

“Ready for you to fuck me, yeah.”

Mike smiled. Peter was cleverer than him and already knew. “Damn. Lube?”

“Bog bag.” Peter raised a hand to gesture at the bed.

“Bog— Oh. Yeah.” With difficulty, Mike eased free and knee-walked to the bed, where the roll thing for travel toiletries was in Peter’s duffel, the thing Davy had given them all last Christmas, in their favorite colors, and that he called a bog bag. The name had stuck. Mike extracted the tube of K-Y and when he got back to Peter, Peter flipped over.

“Want to see you when you take me.”

Little brat knew what words like that, in that deep voice that curled itself around Mike’s nerve endings, did to Mike. Now, they had him slicking his cock and forging inside Peter as quick and as deep as he could, all finesse gone along with any thought of letting Peter draw him in at his own pace. The noise Peter made on being penetrated hard and strong sounded like a sigh of relief, or maybe that was Mike’s own reaction made into sound. Peter raising his hips to accept Mike had Mike bending low to take Peter’s lips in a heated kiss. He almost missed Peter’s mumbled words.

“Move. Harder. Faster,” Peter repeated, this time a command.

He raised his legs and Mike dipped, the two of them in synchrony for Peter to hook his legs over Mike’s shoulders so Mike could fuck him as hard as Peter had ordered him to. But Peter wasn’t getting it all his own way. Mike pulled out, right to the rim of Peter’s hole, then plunged back in, grinning at Peter’s yelp. Peter wiped the grin off his face for him by yanking him down for another scorching kiss.

Mike got a hand between their sweat-slicked torsos to grip Peter’s dick, stroking it from throbbing root to glistening tip then pumping as firmly as he was fucking Peter. Peter shouted Mike’s name a second before his cock pulsed in Mike’s hand, the orgasm that was torn from him making him clench around Mike’s dick buried deep in him. The sight of Peter overcome by pleasure as much as the pleasure he was bringing Mike brought Mike to the edge, and he managed one final thrust before tipping over it, his body spilling into Peter’s so much and so hard and so fast it left him shuddering and shaking, an empty shell whose soul had been ripped from his body.

When it settled back and he came to, either he’d moved or Peter had, so Mike could slip free, despite Peter flexing wickedly around his mostly deflated cock. “Quit it,” Mike ground out, falling to Peter’s side. Peter’s smile glowed impish as he raised his top half a little and turned enough to snuggle into Mike’s neck. He stopped and sniffed, moving his pointy nose over Mike’s face and chin, then regarded Mike.

“Why…do you smell of Stephen?”

“Wut?” was Mike’s snappy comeback.

“Your neck…and chin? Like you were in a clinch?”

“What does Stephen smell of?” There was no point trying to lie, but Mike thought that a good fudge.

“Hemp shampoo.” Peter’s answer was immediate. “It’s supposed to be good for hair regrowth and thickness. He uses it all over as well as a body wash—”

He got no further because Mike was laughing so much it made him join in. “What?” Peter eventually managed.

“Just that Stephen ain’t as…tall as you’d think at first glance.”

“Why do you think he wears that hat?” Peter retorted. “It’s not just to cover his thinning hair.”

“And the stack-heeled boots!” Mike got it. It was his turn to ask what as Peter collapsed into giggles.

“Our worst argument was when I got to LA and saw the Capitol Records Building on Sunset—”

“The Capitol Tower?” Mike made the shape of the famous tall building with one hand.

Peter nodded. “And told him it reminded me of his boot heels!”

“You and him…fooled around some.” It came out as a statement and wasn’t loaded, didn’t hang in the air.

“Yes.” Peter eyed him. “Should…I be asking you the same question?”

“No…” Interesting how, still floating high on that incredible sex, the idea of Peter and his kinda-lookalike together didn’t really hurt. “How much is some?” Mike asked, his voice husky.

“You mean, what did he do to me?” Peter’s eyes gleamed amber as he caught on.

“Where d’you let him touch you?” Mike whispered. He glanced down. His cock was trying to stir, and pressed against him, Peter felt it.

“This is…interesting,” he commented, right in Mike’s ear. “Keep for another time?”

“Yeah.” Mike swallowed, blinking at the possibilities. “Oh, and we’re kinda going for a drink with him too. Long story. But for now, I guess we’d better move. They’ll be coming back soon, and if they bring that Old Ma Harris woman with them, we don’t want to give her a free show, now do we?”

He stood, pulled Peter up, and swatted his cheeky ass for him when the brat muttered something about oh, were they charging her? His Peter always had to have the last word.


	28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

“That was a short stay, guys.” Leona straightened up from helping secure Hope’s crib in the back of the Jeep. “You three have to pay us a longer visit one evening, right, T? We can play, and I’ll cook one of my special rice dishes.”

“That would be real nice.” Mike shaded his eyes in the very early evening sun. “I’d invite you for a meal in the pad, but with Davy the way he is…” He waved a hand from Leona and Tisha.

“That boy still hitting on anything in a skirt?” Tisha queried.

“Yeah and in slacks too, if they’re filled out the right way. And Micky’s not far behind.” Mike shook his head

“And you’re sure you don’t want me to bring your bike back?” Tisha indicated it then laughed at Mike’s face. “Would’ya just look at that. White guys _can_ go even paler. Like, what’s the opposite of blush?”

“Technically, it’s blanche,” Peter informed her, sweeping her into a tight hug. He kissed her cheek and was too much of a gentleman to tell her she was blushing, although he did cup the palm of his hand to it and blew on it after. She swatted his fingers away and made way for him to hug Leona, before they set off, the girls waving behind them.

“D’you think they know what we were doing while they were out?” Peter asked and laughed when Mike’s raised brow in reply reminded him of Leona. “We’re really going back over the hills?”

“The canyons, yeah.” Mike pointed at the windscreen. “Traffic looks as bad as they said it got out this way and heading in, this time of day.”

“I like the scenic route, anyway.” He peeped at Mike in the driving mirror and tried to gauge if Mike was also thinking about them stopping off at a lookout spot.

“Just gotta stop for gas first…”

Peter jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You just passed a station.”

Mike shook his head. “Micky’s not collecting anything from there. But here…” He pulled into the forecourt of a rival gas company station a little way down the road. “He’s started on their dinosaur toys.”

“I love you,” burst from Peter. He couldn’t have stopped it if he’d tried—it felt like a firework going off in his chest. His heart, he amended, rubbing his breastbone to feel and prolong the whizzes and sparks.

“Oh. Well, heh, thanks.”

 _And from blanching to blushing._ He was still a little pink about the tips of the ears as he got out to pump gas and pay. Peter checked on Hope. She’d fallen asleep. He’d been meaning to count up how much she slept during the day and see if it tallied with what the books said. Maybe Mike could help. When Mike came back and leaned in, one knee on the seat, saying he’d called the pad to tell the guys they were on their way home, Peter nodded in acknowledgment then automatically held out his hands to take or catch whatever Mike had brought him.

“Nah.” Mike tried to look stern. “Ya gotta work for it.”

“Here?” Peter looked around. He had no objection to trading Mike a kiss for a candy bar but—

“I mean guess,” Mike said.

“Hmm.” Peter studied the gas station building, the cars milling around and the road. “Butterfinger.”

“Almost.” Mike took the Oh Henry! from behind his back and stroked its tip down Peter’s nose. He was fascinated by the slope, the degree, the angle or something. Peter had no objection to Mike’s interest.

“Thanks.” That chocolate bar would have been Peter’s second guess—both wrappers were yellow. Mike got him not only candy, but candy in one of his favorite colors.

“Don’t eat it all at once now.” Mike checked the exit and pulled out onto the road.

Peter gave him the tiniest flex of one side of his mouth, the side with the beauty spot, as Mike called it. He rooted around in the glove compartment and found Amanda’s reporter’s pad, with a pen stuck through the spirals at the top. He helped himself to a page, squinting at her shorthand notes to see what she was working on. Oh, interesting. He wrote DO NOT EAT; THIS MEANS YOU on the sheet of paper, wrapped his candy in it and shoved the package deep down in the map pocket on his Jeep door.

If the words worked, liked runes or a ward, he’d have surprise chocolate at some point, like a gift through time, from present Peter to future Peter, and the twist of time itself would make the sender past Peter and the recipient present Peter. Or the candy would be there when he remembered it, and he could go and fetch it. Either would be good.

“Tell me?” Mike’s question interrupted Peter’s musing.

“Tell— Oh.” The moment Peter had realized he was in love with him. Mike’s latest ploy was to sneak the question up on him while he was absorbed in something, trying to prod the answer out of him that way. “No.” Peter shifted to sit cross-legged in the passenger seat. “I enjoy your guesses.”

“But it was something like this?” Mike’s gesture encompassed the city, the road, the car, them.

Peter widened it still further—or maybe he narrowed it down—to include Mike’s caring, the way he worked to make them, Peter especially, happy, his understanding of their needs and wants and whims. “Yeah, something very like this,” he agreed.

Silence settled over them, soft and warm like the late afternoon sun on the beach near the pad, for a few minutes before Peter spoke again. “I was thinking about talking to my parents about Hope. They have a right to know. Only not over the phone. It’s too much, right?” He didn’t give Mike time to answer. “In person. As in, go there. Only…I wouldn’t look forward to that.”

“We’ll go with you.” Mike’s answer was immediate.

He didn’t specify if he meant _we two_ , as in him and Hope, or _we four_ , as in everyone else. “Three or five,” Peter mused.

“Both prime numbers. Nothing. Sound good?”

“Yes. I’d like that…but we’d need cash.” And if Mike suggested he ask his parents to pay his fare, like Mike’s mom sent his money for his—but Mike wouldn’t. “’Cause that’s like, mucho moolah, man,” Peter said, in his Micky voice. He liked that expression Micky often used.

“Better get to theme tune writing then.” Mike swung right, starting the climb above Hollywood.

“Huh?”

“Something Grace mentioned…”

Peter listened as Mike explained about the new Monumental TV show, its concept and its intended audience. “What lyrics have you got so far?” he asked, because Mike didn’t wait for words and music to come, to float down from above and settle in a pattern, like dust motes lit up by shafts of sunshine, one he could read. No, he searched for them then pried them from where they hid, like winkling molluscs from their shells with a pin.

“Oh, they’re poor,” Mike prefaced before launching into them.

“Hmm.” Peter agreed. “Could anything I’ve been working on do?”

“What, like, love and peace, man?” Mike grinned at him.

“Maybe! Something like this would need some apt lyrics. Cool, groovy, dig it, where it’s at, love is understanding…” Peter rattled off, scatting like Micky. “We were born to love one another,” he sang, drumming on his knees, Mike throwing in words and notes, just as they did when they noodled on their guitars. _Like we did right from the start_ , Peter thought, creating bonds and ties, before Mike—and okay, probably him too—had realized what they were doing was weaving a shared whole cloth.

He loved the ease between them, its visual counterpoint the early evening sun dappling between the branches waving either side and sometimes overhead, thrown into relief by the rolling deeper greens of the canyons down below on either side. But he couldn’t ignore the stiffening of Mike’s shoulder’s and neck as he glanced more and more and for longer and longer seconds into the driving mirror, the tightening of his hands on the wheel, the uneasy miasma thickening in the jeep. “What.” When Mike didn’t reply, Peter put himself in Mike’s place.

“Don’t turn around. Use the mirrors.” Mike’s sharp tone jabbed him into obeying.

“The car…behind? It’s too close.”

“And been so for a while and getting closer.” Mike sped up a little…and the black Continental’s speed increased in tandem. Only much more so, until it was almost tailgating them. “Maybe they wanna pass?”

Peter tried not to hear a straw-clutching note to Mike’s voice. Mike flashed the Jeep’s lights but stopped his hand thumping the horn, mindful of Hope, then waved his hand out of the window in a _pass, you moron_ gesture. The car didn’t, just inched closer, so Mike had to speed up to avoid getting bumped, then gripped the wheel hard to correct the car to tackle a bend at the higher than usual speed. “ _Shit_ ,” he breathed. “Sorry, little lady. That bitch’s gonna ram us up the ass. Sorry again.”

The Lincoln loomed black and impenetrable as a shark, ready to jump and catch them. Tinted glass. Smoked glass. Also called purdah glass, Peter thought, his thoughts wanting to scatter. He reined them in. _Focus—_

“Goon’s gonna run us off the road!” Mike yelped.

“I think that might be the idea,” Peter replied.

“ _Peter?_ Where—”

Peter evaded Mike’s grab at him and slipped into the back, where he let his actions speak for him: moving Hope’s crib to the footwell of the floor. “She’ll be safer there,” he said, returning to his passenger seat. _From a hit to the back or if we hit anything with the hood_ , he didn’t say. Mike understood. Understood _him_.

They couldn’t pretend, if they ever had been, it was some innocent road user who happened to be going their way, objecting to their speed and yet unable to overtake them on the road. The narrow, twisty road, one that wasn’t the easiest to drive on at the best of times. _It was the best of times, the worst—_ Peter risked a glance into the back. At Hope. He…almost regretted the name. It didn’t seem apt. Well, it wasn’t her real name, he supposed. Would he ever know what was? Had been? She stared back, big-eyed, waving her arms. “Just because you’re paranoid—”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Mike finished for him. Peter hadn’t realized he’d said his words out loud.

So Mike had been right, earlier? He’d been drugged and Hope snatched? He fought to recall the guy who was carrying her in her box-basket. He hadn’t paid attention to the man, all his focus on Hope. He’d been wearing a suit and tie, a hat, had stopped dead at the three of them exclaiming and rushing up—

“It’s like these clowns think the law doesn’t apply to them!” Mike snarled, shooting a look over his shoulder at their pursuers’ dangerous, illegal manouvres.

“Maybe it doesn’t…if they have diplomatic immunity,” Peter suggested, grabbing for the Jesus bar above his door just as the Continental bumped them, shoving them forward a foot. Wow, the shock as much as the actual thud jolted him. He nodded an _I’m fine_ at Mike’s anxious look across at him.

“This is a Jeep, not a Dodge ’Em car,” Mike growled. “God in heaven—if that creep Otto really wants the throne this bad, why doesn’t he just buy himself one!”

“Like the Usurper,” Peter recalled. It didn’t make him smile now.

“Or get someone to steal him the one from the Palace Throne Room!” Mike yelped, accelerating again and saluting an oncoming car in the other lane that beeped its horn at him for his speed.

“It’s not just about a throne as a chair. It’s synecdoche. The throne stands for ruling.” Peter tugged his shirt free of his pants and used it to dot the sweat from his forehead. “And what it brings. All politics, all ideology comes down to economics. Bettina told me Otto’s supporters are in it for his business deals, his plans. He promised half the forest to a US paper manufacturer and he’s going to plant fast-growing trees, like eucalyptus, there.”

“Charming, I don’t think,” Mike muttered. He spared Peter a glance. “You doing okay, good buddy?”

Peter nodded, his motion tight and sharp. “His big scheme is to tear up everything from the old lido down to the traditional fisherman’s cottages at the harbor, make a new waterfront with a casino and luxury condos, attract foreigners. He says it’s going to be the New Monaco.” He knew he was gabbling. He was just amazed he wasn’t stuttering. “So there’s lots of vested interests in his ambitions from his backers, the top percent who stand to gain big from selling off the rest of the country. Bettina’s more about doing what’s best for the entire kingdom—” The harder knock from behind that shot their Jeep forward cut off his words.

“ _Bastards!_ ” Mike yelled, with no apology corollary this time. “So, what are the odds—reckon they wanna force us to stop or force us off the road? I’d say stop—they want the baby unharmed, so Bettina’s enemies can parade her and make her look unfit to rule.”

“Or dead, so she gives up. Either way, I think we’re expendable, Mike.”

“Jeez, Pete!” The look Mike turned on him was one of shock. “I don’t like either of those odds. I’m gonna try outrun ’em, okay?”

“Okay.” Peter swallowed.

“Huh. Where’s Micky when you need him? The loon drives like this anyway. Any day of the week. This would be meat and drink to him.” Mike hit the gas pedal.

“Chips and soda,” Peter agreed. “Or pizza and beer. A Micky Special, say.” The speed pinned him to his seat, like he was on a ride at the fair. “Davy’d be moaning this is messing his hair up.” He felt pleased and proud that Mike gave a half-chuckle at that.

The Jeep almost fishtailed as Mike took a bend too fast, and he wrestled with the wheel to get the vehicle under control, wrenching hard to avoid a small pickup truck coming the other way. Did they clip it? Peter didn’t know and none of them stopped to see, especially not when their Jeep skidded across the road into their lane but one front wheel shot over the edge to the drop below, spinning over nothingness before Mike rammed into reverse and got them free.

“This is too risky.” Mike’s voice was too calm as he sped them onward, the black Continental visible at their tail once more. “I think we’re gonna have to pull over, try and get a jump on what’s coming next that way. Agreed?”

Peter didn’t look into the back, where Hope had started to wail, and forced himself to reply. “Agreed.”

“You know I love you.” And now Mike’s voice was _much_ too calm.

“Even with…” There was no point going on.

“What d’you think, darlin’?” Mike slowed, flashing his lights to signal his intention to their pursuers. The road widened a tad just up ahead and it was obvious he was making for there, for that impromptu verge. Not like he had much choice…

“I think—” Peter’s words were cut off by the blue Camaro that roared up out of nowhere behind them…them and the menacing black car tailing them. “I think the odds have changed, is what I think.”


	29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I think you’re right,” Mike answered, hitting the gas pedal hard as the Camaro screeched alongside the Continental. “Because, Pete, that car…it’s—”

“Yes.” Yes, Mike knew the car. Not as well as Peter did, but he had seen it a few times two Decembers back, when they’d been on the same seasonal mini-tour of LA as its owners, and he’d probably noticed it earlier today, parked next to the apartment building its owners lived in. Mike tended to notice cars. “And no, I don’t have any idea— The _hell_?”

Both he and Mike stared openmouthed as a head stuck itself out of the passenger-side window. A head and a hand. A hand holding a gun, with which Tisha—it must be; Leona liked to drive—shot out first the Continental’s back near tire, then, Leona accelerating a little, its front. Just two shots, _bang bang_ , with maybe two seconds in between.

The sound of one burst tire filled the two-second gap and the second brought the exchange to a close. The Camaro sped up a little more, to pull in behind the Jeep…and the Continental swerved and veered…right over the side of the road, a wrenching, slithering, rustling noise accompanying its slide down the bank.

“Holy _God_!” shouted Mike, his head whipping back and forth between craning out of his window to see behind him and peering through the windshield to see in front of him. Peter was amazed Mike had the presence of mind to slow and turn the vehicle onto what really couldn’t be called a verge, but would have to do. As Mike braked, the Camaro pulled up behind them and Tisha scrambled out…and down. Down the side of the canyon.

“She’s going after them? On foot? A _foot chase_?” Mike gasped, trying to get his brain working again.

Reaching for his door handle, Peter could only shrug his incomprehension.

“No. Stay here with Hope,” Mike ordered, already out of the vehicle and hurtling toward Leona, now standing at the side of hers.

Peter compromised, remaining halfway between the vehicles, almost wanting to laugh at Mike’s bewildered, “Wut… How… Wut?” to Leona.

“You okay, Peter? And the baby?” Leona called, wrapping her arms around one of Mike’s and walking him back to Peter, who couldn’t stop himself reaching out to clutch both Mike and Leona. “We should have realized sooner something was wrong. Old Ma Harris said there was a suspicious car hanging about! She banged on her window just as you went, to tell us it was back, and we saw it go after you. So _we_ came after you.”

She made it seem as simple as checking on Hope, and replacing her basket on the back seat, cooing that this was much better for her as she did so.

“Peter?” Mike whispered, but Peter just shook his head.

Tisha emerged from the scrub at the side of the road a minute later, tucking her gun away into her shoulder purse, while Peter and Mike still gaped. “You okay? What, you think we’d let some punks mess with our friends?” she added, joining them.

“And?” Leona prompted.

“They left the car and made a run for it.”

“Get it, change the tires, finders keepers?” Leona raised an eyebrow as she asked. “It’s how we got this one, after all.”

Tisha shook her head. “Rented. I took a look, but couldn’t see any papers or rental agreements.”

“They’d probably be in a fake name anyway, right?” Leona asked Peter, who shrugged again. “Don’t looked so shocked, Mike! Don’t you know you just don’t mess with women from Detroit?”

“And especially not with women from the Detroit projects,” Tisha chipped in. “We’re armed _and_ beautiful.”

“I see that.” Mike blew out a breath. “I understand that. Boy, do I ever. Well, thanks, ladies. That was…above and beyond. Anything!”

“Custody battle?” Tisha jerked her chin toward the Jeep, and Hope. “You better sort it out, Petey. Until then, take this.” She pulled a small gun from her purse. Peter…didn’t think it was the one she’d put away a minute ago. It wasn’t warm to the touch, indicating it’d been fired, anyway.

“Now, see, Peter doesn’t believe in—”

“Packing heat?” Peter cut Mike off. “I do now.” He took the .22 and checked the sight, then racked the weapon, his movements swift and practiced with muscle memory _._

“Peter!” Mike held out his hand and Peter gave him the gun, butt first, for him to examine. His actions were almost as quick and smooth as Peter’s. “You left one in the pipe? On a firearm you don’t know?”

Peter was suddenly reminded Mike had been in the armed services. He watched him slide the rack back and let the bullet drop, his expression one of reprove as he engaged the external safety. Peter hadn’t.

“Oh, thanks.” Mike took the offered holster, clipped it to the back of his belt and stuck the gun down the back of his waistband, pulling his shirt over it.

“How quickly can you get that operable?” Peter challenged.

“Very quick, once…we need it.” His expression said he would. He adjusted the gun’s cant and made sure he could rotate his waist and shoulder to draw normally, just his thumb and not the back of his hand shoved down his waistband, and that he didn’t have to adjust his grip too much after. “I ain’t carrying cocked and locked. One in the _cano_ and no external safety on? Peter, you’re an _animal_!”

“No. Not an animal. Just…a protector.” Peter peered through the window at Hope.

“Yeah, well, me too.” Mike’s smile warmed Peter through.

***

Tisha’s “sort it out” banged through Peter’s head, making itself into a rhythm along with the sound of the car as they drove; the hum of the engine and the bump of the tires. He wanted to shiver now the adrenaline had ebbed. Oh, yes— He dug into the map pocket for the chocolate and broke a chunk off. About to bite a piece of that off, he instead cracked it in two and offered some to Mike first.

“Oh! Why, thank you, darlin’.” Mike’s beam seemed out of proportion to the simple act although he probably needed the sugar to cushion against the shock too. “You know, we should have offered some to the ladies,” he mused. “Least we could have done.”

 _Ladies._ Mike respected women and thought them men’s equal but had declined an escort home or offer of backup from Leona and Tisha. Liberated, as Davy had said, yes, but proud. A small secret smile tilted Peter’s lips, only for _sort it out_ to wipe it off before it settled. “Any ideas to flush out whoever's after us?” he asked.

“Several.” Mike’s face was grim. “Let me run ’em by you.”

“Might be better if we stopped somewhere to do that,” Peter suggested. They’d left the canyon roads and were in the midst of traffic. Of people. Anonymity in crowds. Safety in numbers. “Hope needs feeding and changing, for one thing.”

“Uh-huh. And I guess we’ll need a phone, for another…”

***

“And you’re positive-sure Toby’ll be out all night?” Mike asked Davy again, later that evening when, all in their pajamas or shorts and tees, and a nightshirt—Micky—they were all squashed into her parents’ big double bed, at the Willises’, in a sleepover Monkee pile.

“ _Yes._ ” Davy was repeating himself, but didn’t sound as impatient as that would usually have made him. His eyes were fixed on Mike, feeding Hope. Well, Peter’s were too, and a warm bud unfurled and bloomed in his chest. _In his heart._ “I got Sooze from down the road to call her and ask her to go there, stay the night, ’cause she’s all upset about some dodgy bloke who’s been arsing her about.”

“Dodgy bloke…arsing her about…” Micky jerked his head and raised his hands about like a robot trying to compute something. To translate something, Peter supposed. Didn’t Amanda have something similar for UK-US English? “A creep of a guy stepping out on her! Oh, not you?”

“No, you pillock.”

Peter suspected Davy made some of his Britishisms up. Berk? Prat? Git? He’d called someone a dipstick the other day, for God’s sake!

“But I will have to make it up to her for doing me a favor. _If_ you know what I mean.”

“We always know what you mean,” Peter and Mike said at the same time, their voices blending effortlessly. _We should sing lead together more_ , Peter thought. He sang with Micky and Davy, but—

“ _Man!_ I don’t know how you do it,” Micky burst out.

“Same way all guys do. Only _better_.” Davy winked.

“What, you got, like, some Best of Britain award?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Davy teased.

“Yes!” Micky exploded.

“Well, you won’t.” But Davy looked a little nervous. Peter wondered if his enthusiasm for the modified Monkee pile was due to what Mike had told him about Micky seemingly conducting sleep experiments on Davy. _What if he goes from the theoretic to the practical?_ Peter imagined Davy thinking.

“Well, if Toby does come back, she better know how to turn off the alarms,” Mike said. “We don’t wanna wake up this little lady now I got her all settled.”

Peter’s heart swelled, more so when Hope clutched Mike’s thick dark hair as he propped her over his shoulder and patted her, his actions rhythmic and gentle. “Yes, this place is a bit fortress-like,” he commented, to stop himself gazing and his eyes tearing up. “Including this room…”

It was locked with a key and a keypad they had to push a code into and even so, they had their stuff piled in front of the door. He lifted the carpet and checked the trapdoor again, attracting the other’s attention as he opened it to show them the technique. Maybe they were being over-cautious, but no one would be looking for them at the Willises’, he hoped, plus the house’s stocked-up civil unrest shelter ran under half the length of it, and was accessible from this room.

“You mean civil _protection_ , right?” he’d asked Toby not long after she’d moved to live at her parents’ holiday place in Beechwood. She had visited their pad and was describing the inside of hers, including its converted basement. “Like, a fallout shelter?”

“No, Daddy had it built in case of civil unrest in the neighborhood,” she’d said, pointing at their hair and clothes and their mess of a house. “It’s fitted with a flush toilet and a water shower and everything.”

“More than this place got then,” Mike had commented sourly, vanishing into the john with a wrench and the bucket.

“Mick, you sure you got everything we need for tomorrow?” Mike asked now. Peter was fascinated to see him as in-command as usual, yet with a baby on one shoulder, and speaking in a quieter voice because of her. It didn’t make him any the less effective as a leader, though.

“Uh-huh. And if not, there’s tons of stuff here. Lots of tools, gadgets…”

Micky’s expression said an inventory of what he could help himself to was filed away for whenever he should need it. Mike exchanged a _remember we gotta keep a lid on that_ look with Peter. “And you made the phone call I asked?”

Peter wasn’t so sure about that part but…

Micky nodded. “And I went to the pier – once it was dark—for that bit. I’m exhausted already, just thinking about it.”

“Better get some rest then.” Mike placed Hope in her crib and looked at the sprawl of Monkee limbs and bodies on the double mattress. “Micky, if you ain’t done your teeth, it’s too late now. I’m not dismantling the barricade. Now, who’s where? I’m on the outside edge, spooning Peter.”

“Oh you always get to top. I mean…be at the top,” Peter said, just to make Mike splutter.

They all must have been tired—there was the bare minimum of Monkee-around slapstick before they rearranged themselves into Mike-Peter, both facing inward, then Micky-Davy…also facing inward, meaning Micky’s face was up against his, making Peter laugh. “He did his teeth, Mike,” he said over his shoulder.

“Yeah, with my toothbrush. Forgot his, the pranny,” came sleepily from behind Micky.

“Davy always gets to be big spoon,” Micky griped.

‘‘’Cause I’ve got a big spoon, mate,” came even slower and sleepier.

“We’ll see who’s laughing tomorrow,” Micky promised.

“Hope it’s us,” Peter whispered, and Mike’s arms tightened over him in response. He fell asleep to Mike’s warmth surrounding him and his gentle snores and occasional nutters in his ear.

***

“This brilliant idea sure has a lot of moving parts,” Micky commented the next day, when they were in the middle of the crowd on the beach, a little more than halfway to the pier and not down their own less populated end, the idea being to always stay in a group.

“And talking of…” Mike checked Davy was in position, then nudged Micky into action.

Kid did them proud, leaping up as though stung by a jellyfish, his transistor to his ear. “D’ya hear that?” he shouted to all and sundry. “Spot Sam Slick’s here in Santa Monica today! You know, spot Sam Slick boss jock DJ, and you get fifty bucks and to record a spot for show! _Sam Slick_ , man!”

He continued exclaiming and Mike watched the news travel through the crowd of kids, the _ess_ sounds in the DJ’s name making the murmurs sound like willow trees whispering, or waves swishing.

“It says he’s on the pier!” cried Davy from a few feet away, waving his own radio.

And now the crowd turned into a hive, fizzing and buzzing and, more importantly, swarming en masse down to and on to the pier, the Monkees among them.

“Thought you couldn’t remember what the guy from the supermarket looked like,” Peter reminded Mike, making him realize he must look like an automaton, twisting and turning his neck every two paces, trying to spot, well, anyone who stuck out, maybe. Nothing struck him in the host of strangers walking about, enjoying the day, the attractions, such as they were on the first arm of the pier.

One of the last booths, just before the second, longer and emptier arm of the structure, the bit that stuck out into the sea and was usually frequented only by fishermen or people strolling was unoccupied, and it was to where they made a quick detour. Mike glanced around the small space. Whatever was in this one never lasted long. The fortune teller went out of business without having seen it coming, the hypnotist got amnesia… He was glad he’d made Peter wait outside as he handed over some of the contents of their beach bag to the couple waiting there.

“Come on.” He elbowed Peter as he exited, making him sneak past the huge THIS SECTION CLOSED—DANGER OF SUBSIDANCE sign Micky had fixed there yesterday, hoping the place Micky had stolen his sign from hadn’t subsided and collapsed on anyone in the absence of a warning.

They didn’t have far to go, just down to the first set of wooden steps to the small gate where boats pulled up and passengers alighted, risking a dunking if they mis-stepped. And where sailors, like this one there, his cap pulled low, his knitted sweater huge, his beard bushy and his pipe large, could be engaged in conversation about hiring a boat and pilot, about being sailed away fast, no questions asked…

“No questions and no answers neither,” wheezed the old salt. “Sure, at high tide. If ya got mucho moolah.”

Mike glared. That hadn’t been— But there was no time to blast Micky for it now, not when he and Peter, joined by Davy, had to slip into the tiny fishermen’s café-kiosk halfway along this remote stretch of pier, shuttered and closed as it was, with the pier being out of bounds that day. The small hut was dark and cramped inside, and though Mike pried loose a tiny section of the painted wooden slats across the front hatch, he couldn’t see much, either inside or out. Was here a good place? Couldn’t they have done this at the pad?

“Guess we just gotta wait,” he counselled the others, and even though they were expecting it, the special rap on the hut’s door some time later made them jump. “Micky? Okay?” he demanded, pulling the ‘fisherman’ in. “You—he, or they—”

“Made contact. They must have been watching you. Us, yeah.” Micky peeled off his disguise, wincing at the tug of the facial hair glue. “Two guys, came up and asked if ‘young people’ had been inquiring about hiring my fishing boat.”

They had to ask Micky; he was the only one there, what with the pier ‘closed off’. Micky’s phrasing struck him. “Wait. ‘Young people’?”

“Yeah, they were foreign. And one was a big guy, like you said.” Micky shone his flashlight around, to see their faces. “And I told ’em yep, you’d be going at high tide.”

“And if they were watching, as they musta been to see us going down there, then they know we’re in here.” Mike tried to sound jubilant that their plan was working but it was hard to when he felt like a sitting duck.

“We have to assume they won’t make a move until dark,” Peter reassured him.

“As _soon_ as it’s dark, as that’s high tide.” Mike inhaled. “Better get ready…”


	30. Chapter Thirty

Their contributions consisted more of squeezing against the walls of the tiny hut, basically just a kitchen with a serving hatch, as Micky worked, holding and pulling and loading and balancing at his direction. Well, except for Davy, who mostly perched on the counter, head on one side, watching them work.

“You know why I’m excused. What I did,” he said, shooting a glance from the corners of his eyes at Peter when Mike invited him to take hold of a rope and heave.

About to say no, he didn’t, Davy added “Don’t you?” to the end of his sentence and gave a similar sidelong flick of his gaze toward Mike as he addressed those words to Peter.

Mike caught Peter’s elbow and turned him enough to look in his eyes and see the puzzled light in them. Peter shook his head. “Yeah, Davy,” Mike replied, his eyes still on Peter. “I can see it’s difficult to grab the end of a rope when you’re busy playing both ends against the middle.”

Davy had grace to laugh. “Micky?” he asked, waving at all the prep work going on. “D’you get ideas from _Road Runner_ cartoons?”

“Meep meep,” Micky shot back. “And not all, no. This one’s from _Bugs Bunny_ , actually.”

“Oh, in that case, here.” Peter rummaged in his bag and stuck a slice of raw carrot between Micky’s teeth for him.

“Call that food?” But he chomped on it anyway. “Man, it seems so unfair being in a café and there’s no real munchables,” came thickly as he crunched.

Just as dusk fell, Micky announced he was finished.

“Don’t we need a test run?” Mike asked. He glared around, but neither Micky nor Davy took up the quip, suggested testing it on Peter, a dummy run. The _D_ word had been banned from their vocabularies at least a year back.

“Nah.” Micky tested the connection to the door handle. “It either works or it doesn’t.”

“You gotta know that’s not very reass—” A noise outside made Mike break off. “That’s…” he whispered, pointing at the hatch against which they all stood in the semi-dark. Three heads nodded around him. That was someone testing the hatchway from the outside! Mike crossed his fingers, shoving his hand into Peter’s for him to wrap his long warm fingers around Mike’s. The noise and any exclamation or utterance stopped and footsteps moved to the back of the hut, and the door there.

This was easier to open, locked as it was with just a simple gate latch, the bar of which could be pushed up from outside, once the door had been shouldered open a little and a hand slid in to knock the bar from its rest.

“Now!” Mike mouthed and as one the four of them released the mechanism they’d installed that shut the hatch fast from the outside and that could be opened outward easily and quickly…and through which four Monkees could scramble.

Could scramble through just as the hut’s door was shoved open and the trap sprung. Mike winced at the first stage, the pully activated by the opening of the door making a pendulum weight thud into a body, and the thud of that body hitting the others, and at least one hitting the floor. Peter closed his eyes as that or another body, deciding to crawl inside instead, pressed on the section of floor that gave way, revealing the industrial-strength glue pit beneath home to the huge, hairy spiders Micky had temporarily housed there.

Davy shook his head as someone scurried to the wall, perhaps thinking the edges of the hut were safer, only to trigger the dropping of the tarpaulin from the ceiling…and the gallons of liquid it held. From the screams this elicited, Mike didn’t even want to guess what chemicals Micky had mixed into the water.

 _Is that it? It’s over?_ he thought, but didn’t say. He knew better than to jinx anything. Four exhalations in unison told him the others had been holding their breaths and now released them, along with him.

“Got it!” Davy slapped his thigh. “It’s Mouse Trap game, your inspiration, right?”

“I was thinking Rube Goldberg,” Peter replied, clapping Micky on the back.

“I’m wondering why we didn’t just wait for them to come in and hit them over the head with frying pans,” Mike started to say, when he leaped forward, pulling the others with him as the hut’s walls caved in, one by one.

“Oh, who’ve guessed all the walls were load bearing? And the roof,” Micky added, as that collapsed too, the creak and crash making the boards on which they stood vibrate like plucked strings.

“We gotta split,” Mike said, seeing Peter’s antsy face. He wanted Hope, Mike knew. There was nothing in the bassinet they carried, but Shelly and Lloyd were stepping over the fake warning sign and approaching, for them to take Hope back after they’d left her with the couple in the once fortune teller’s, then hypnotist’s, kiosk earlier. The duo had taken Mike’s instructions to the letter to disguise Hope as Henry…which meant she was dressed in the fluffy kitten costume Mrs. P had made him, so he’d look the same as her prized cat. She looked most displeased, even when Peter cuddled her close.

“So we’re all quits now, after that?” Shelly inquired of Mike. “No mentioning anything to anyone?”

“Yep. Real quits,” Mike assured her.

“I’ll say.” Lloyd folded his arms. “Shelly – we’re though. Your life is just too goddam much!”

“ _What?_ ” Her scream startled a line of gulls into flying off, cawing their displeasure. “How dare you! No one breaks up with me. No one!” She was still screeching and hitting out at him as he hurried off with her teetering after him, cursing when her high heel got stuck between two of the pier’s wooden boards.

“It’s that kiosk!” Micky pointed at it. “It’s cursed! I’m glad I didn’t go in there. This time.”

“And I’m glad there isn’t really a boat,” Mike replied. They should think about calling the cops, from the booth down near the or the boardwalk. Near Barney’s. Near normality.

“Boat…” Davy echoed.

“Boat…” Micky replied, stilling where he stood.

“Boat…” Peter said, slowly.

“Yeah, it…almost sounds like one approaching.” Mike hated the words as soon as they left his mouth.

“Because there is.” Davy pointed at the water. “Bloody great big one, going quickly too. Coming quickly, I should say.”

“Oh sh…” Mike bit back the expletive. “We should—”

“Let’s—”

“We better—”

“Now’s a good time to—”

No one finished a sentence because a cannister whizzed over the side of the pier, dense clouds of smoke-like fog outgassing from it with a hiss.

“Oh, unfair! Where’s that come from?” whined Micky.

“I don’t know, but I know where it’s going,” was Mike’s grim reply as the smoke rose.

“Where’d you all go?” came Micky’s next question as the haze covered the pier.

“Here. And that’s going there…” Davy was a small chiaroscuro figure glimpsed in the fumes and plumes of smoke and fog, and Mike wished his mind wasn’t listing the shades of gray of the billowing clouds, because words like _battleship_ and _gunmetal_ and _cadet_ seemed ominous. Davy kicked the cylinder over the side, and a splash said it fell into the water…just as the shaking and thumping said people were climbing the wooden steps up from the tiny jetty attached to the pier’s piling, to reach the pier, where they stood.

“Run!” Davy urged.

“Which way?” snapped Mike, grabbing for Peter’s hand. Peter had Hope wrapped to him and, Mike prayed, her face tuned away from any fumes.

“It’s dry ice, not a smoke bomb. It’s harmless,” Peter said, nevertheless clutching his hand tightly, as tightly as Micky held his other.

Oh yeah. Mike had studied drama, been in productions—he should have recognized the substance sooner, by its smell and chill and the way the thick fog hovered within a few feet of the ground. It wasn’t dangerous but disorientating. _Un-northing_. He couldn’t even tell how many people had disembarked, were in their midst, that is, not until someone spritzed a fine spray of water all around, dissipating the carbon dioxide and the person standing there was—

“ _Honeywell?_ ” came from all four Monkees.

Before the CIS agent could reply, he was pushed aside by a woman, medium height, her intense blue eyes searching and her long chestnut-brown bangs and ponytail swinging with her lightning-quick, yet graceful movements. She reached out, her hands and arms long and slender. Expressive, Mike thought. Athletic, maybe? No, _balletic_ , he pinpointed.

“Face?” the woman said, her accent foreign. “My face! That face! That beautiful face…”

But it was Peter’s face she stroked, just for one second before she squealed and wrenched the baby free of her papoose, talking a mile to the minute in a language Mike didn’t know. Was it…Russian? Who was this chick, dropping a kiss on Peter’s face and hugging and kissing and cuddling Hope and laughing and crying and—

“Natasha?” Peter asked, looking at her and them, as bewildered as Mike was feeling.

“Who?”

“Natasha Pavlova!” said Micky, as Davy nodded. “We told you about the Druvanian ballerina… didn’t we? The crazy chick who was in love with Peter, but then she met—”

“Alexei!” announced a man, making a dramatic theatrical entrance stepping though the remnants of the fog. A man who looked identical to—

“Peter!” he boomed, embracing him.

And then it was a huddle of the two strangers—to Mike—hugging the baby between them, crooning and examining, and sparing the occasion pat or smile for Peter.

“ _Ma ma_ ,” came from Hope, snuggled in Natasha’s arms.

“Mama!” Mike finally understood.

“ _Na na_ ,” Hope continued, clutching Alexei too.

“And why do I think that’s Russian for Papa?” Mike continued, hating how light his heart felt. Because when he’d first glimpsed Natasha and seen her affection for Peter, he’d thought…the worst.

“But…” Micky pointed at Peter, still and pale.

Davy knocked his finger down, and made a sly gesture from Peter to the baby. “We thought…” He let his eyebrow pump ask the rest of his question to Honeywell.

“I don’t understand!” Peter, beyond subtlety or discretion, shouted. “I thought she—”

“ _We_ thought.” Mike would back him up in whatever he needed.

“But I left you a note, explaining and asking for help!” Honeywell looked from one to another of them, frowning in confusion. “I told you that after Natasha and Alexei defected to the US and married, kidnap threats were made against their baby, to force them to return behind the iron Curtain as propaganda.”

“Wait—” Mike tried.

“So we hid the real baby and they’ve been carrying around a doll to fool their enemies, as we got a lead that things were escalating! Which meant I had to leave the stolen tech case to Modell, only now I have to jump back into that as the agent you helped catch is claiming he was brainwashed into confession and saying he wanted to turn and…”

While everyone tried not to look at Micky, Mike said, “Escalating? You said things were gonna escalate?”

“Yes, and they did, too much.” Honeywell took his glasses off and wiped them. “We had to lie low for a few days, not just a couple hours, because the most ruthless, dangerous mercenaries in all of Druvania—”

“Are lying in a heap, unconscious!” shouted another operative, emerging from the rubble of the hut.

Micky shrugged in an _it was nothing_ way. “You’re welcome.”

Mike listened, his eyes on Peter as the CIS men conferred and agreed on how to flush out the informant or traitor or double agent they must have in their ranks who was betraying them by passing on info, and how they hoped “you four boys didn’t have any trouble.”

“Bet it’s those Smith and Jones guys!” Davy said. “Real gits, the pair of ’em.”

“Oh yeah!” Micky agreed, and Mike nodded.

“But our precious baby girl is safe thanks to you, _dvoyurodnyy brat_!” Alexei addressed Peter, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek, then Mike, just because he was standing there, he guessed. It was very strange being this close to someone so like and yet not Peter. Alexei was thicker muscled, his movements more forceful and he smelled wrong.

“Wait.” Mike pointed at the not-Peter. “He just call you a brat?”

Peter shook his head. Yeah, he spoke a little Russian, Mike knew. “It means cousin-german.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Mike had to ask.

“One related by descent in a diverging line from a known common ancestor,” Davy’s answer came pat before he clasped a hand over his mouth then clouted Micky around the back of his head with the other.

“You look so alike,” Mike had to comment.

“I don’t think you caught his surname before?” Honeywell asked. “It’s Straus.”

“Straus? That’s my maternal grandmother’s surname.” Peter’s forehead creased. He still didn’t look as though he were taking things in.

“Yes, your great-great-grandfather, Michael Straus, was born in Germany.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that, or his name. I know my great-grandfather, Gustav Carl Straus, was. He emigrated to the States last century.”

“And my great-grandfather, Carl Gustav, was his twin!” Alexei announced. “They left Germany together.”

“For New York?” Mike asked. Peter’s grandmother’s family were New Yorkers, he knew.

“ _Da_ , only Carl Gustav went wrong on journey and ended up in Russia. Russia is nice,” Alexei said, into the silence. He shrugged and gave them all another kiss on their cheeks, which ruffled his thick blond bangs. “America is better.”

“And you’re in the clear now,” Honeywell started to tell Mike, but Peter put a shaking hand on his arm. He looked as though he was only just now catching up.

“She’s… _their_ baby?”

“Little Petya? Yes! What did you think…Oh, _God_.” Honeywell finally understood. “But the note—”

“Was covered in too much piss to read!” Mike yelped.

“Urine dissolves ink, true, true. I’m so sorry for any confusion…” He prattled on, but Mike didn’t listen. He was glad the baby’s parents were so happy, and only just now realizing this was ending where it had started, on a pier.

“I should have known,” he philosophized. “This whole thing started with lookalikes and it’s been filled with nothing but replacements and twins and doubles and—”

“Doppelgangers. Literally ‘double-walker’, it means a non-biologically related lookalike or double of a living person and—” Davy stopped and this time punched Micky in the stomach. Fairly hard.

But Mike was on a roll. “And so many echoes and reflections and illusions and—”

“ _Peter!_ ” wheezed Micky, smacking Mike’s arm and making him turn and see where Peter, looking beyond distraught, more heartbroken, as if his world had collapsed, tears streaming down his face, was stumbling away. “Go. We’ll take care of stuff back at the pad. Her room and things, so Peter doesn’t have to see them. Go!”

Mike went, rushing on the water-slippery board of the pier, and soon caught him up. “Hey. It’s okay. Oh, darlin’.” It wasn’t okay. “Come on down here, where it’s private.” He helped Peter down the short set of steps, nudging him to turn off onto the relatively broad wooden strut of the piling, the underpier support, where he could sit, and Mike could hold him while he sobbed.


	31. Chapter Thirty-One

Peter had gone from weeping to sobbing and now he simply cried, then cried some more. He made no attempt to stop his emotions and reactions pouring through him and from him, even though they wracked him. It was a reaction to events – something akin to normal, a part of processing, of dealing. But the emotions fuelling it were so mixed they left him shuddering.

“So that’s it? She’s just gone?” he hiccupped. “And if we ever see her again, she won’t remember us. Won’t know us. After all we all went through together…”

He didn’t suppose Mike could understand his muffled words, but Mike replied.

“No. I reckon Natasha and Alexei will bring her for visits, you being family. Or we can go visit her. And I also reckon they’ll tell her all about you. She’ll always know you.”

And Mike simply held him close, tight to his chest, near to his heart, to cry some more. His arms around Peter felt firm and secure, safe and warm, just as Mike was, in his life. It took Peter a moment of two to understand what the wetness on the top of his head was—that Mike was crying too.

“Oh.” Still hiccupping and shuddering, Peter sat up. He took the handkerchief Mike pushed into his hand and blotted first the mess he’d made on Mike’s shirt, then wiped Mike’s face for him. “Sorry,” he muttered, but Mike’s head shake came at once.

“Don’t be. Never be. You know that.” He tipped Peter’s hand to his face, to stem the tears still trickling.

Peter shook his head. “Not done yet.” He felt more than heard Mike’s tiny huff of a half-laugh a second before Mike’s hand cupped the back of his head, to encourage him back down to his chest again. His tears still flowed a little, but silently now.

“Can you talk about it? If you want? Or should that be do you want to talk about it, if you can?” Mike made a _tsk_ noise at himself. “I’m still learning, sugar.”

“You’re doing fine,” Peter assured him, opening a few of Mike’s shirt buttons to slip in a hand and play with his pelt. His fuzz. Peter liked the warmth and life of it, something _real_ and _there_ in the midst of his sorrow. He laid his hand over Mike’s heart and felt its beat. “I feel guilty at feeling a little relieved. I wanted…but I feel kind of relieved.” The confession burst from him.

Mike cuddled him tighter, although his twisted-over position, on a plank of wood over sour-smelling salt ocean water, couldn’t have been comfortable. “I know,” he said. “Because, well, me too.”

“ _Petya._ ” The feminine version of the name Peter. That had hurt too. He wished he’d known her real name. It must have been on the note left. If only they’d been able to read that. “It’s not fair!” he suddenly said. “I’d have been a good father.”

“A great father. Yeah. You will, darlin’.” Mike pushed his face into the top of Peter’s head and Peter knew it was to blot up fresh tears.

“So will you,” he told Mike fiercely, raising his head to look into his eyes, as much as he could in the gloom of the dank underpier. “Wait. ‘Will’? Not would? Or would have been?”

“ _Will_.” Mike sat back a little from his hunched position, but left his hands around Peter’s upper arms, not breaking their connection. “We’re gonna have kids one day, right? Now you showed me it’s not too bad? That it’s, in fact, wonderful? And they’ll be just as perfect as Petya.”

Peter opened his mouth to speak, but no reply or rejoinder came, so he closed the gap between them to kiss. He got a hand to Mike’s cheek just as Mike cupped his, and when their lips met, soft and smooth and right, and their tongues took and gave, they didn’t part for long minutes. “Just as perfect,” he whispered.

“And they’ll have your dimple,” Mike told him, teasing in his forefinger in that way he liked to do. “And your beauty spot.” He bent in again to stroke it with his tongue. “Petya didn’t have either. Should’ve realized—”

“That she was my cousin…second cousin? Once removed?” Peter gave up trying to untangle the genealogy of it. “Wait again. You’re suggesting we have children…out of wedlock? Tut tut. We’ll never get into the country club like that.” Now he mopped his face, drying off.

“Oh, _I_ see. I get it.” Mike nodded, long and slow. He helped Peter to scooch and scramble along the pilings until the pier was no longer over the ocean but the sand, and they could drop down onto it. But by mutual accord they didn’t, choosing instead to clamber up, onto the pier proper. It was deserted, although it wasn’t that late. The CIS must have cleared it.

“Get what?” he thought to ask.

“That that was you hinting I gotta make an honest man of ya first.” Mike’s grin lit up the dusk.

“Oh!” Peter’s joined it. _Oh._ “When?”

“Oh, well, let’s see now.” Mike looked up as if counting on the stars. “Well, way I reckon it, we’ve been together a year and a half.”

Peter stopped walking, for all their pace had been an amble at most. “Michael, we’ve been together just over a month!”

“No no, shotgun. See, a year and a half ago, that’s when I knew I wanted to spend my life with you.” Mike took his hand. “We’ve been together, well, heh, _physically_ for a month, and that’s just the icing on the cake. And, babe, you’re a real cake. A cake and a half.” He drew Peter’s hand to his lips and kissed the back. “A whole baker’s dozen of cakes.”

“Aww. Michael…” Peter used the tail of his own shirt this time, to dab at his eyes. “So that’s how you see the date?”

“Oh, there’s a whole lot of dates, I reckon. Like, about two years since we met? When I loved you at first sight?”

They walked a few paces, reaching the part of the pier that housed its few attractions, and where as usual, a few diehard stragglers, maybe ones who’d ignored any official warning or order to scram, or who had arrived after, strolled. “Go on?” Peter invited. He loved hearing stuff like this, and Mike’s skim of a forefinger down his nose said he knew as much.

“So two years seems a good round number, don’t you think?”

“Yes?”

“So, when it’s two years in total since I wanted to spend my life with, which makes six months of—”

“Being physical.”

“Beautifully put, as always. Which is mid-January, then it’ll be time.” Mike looked pleased with himself.

“For?”

“You’ll see. And January's just the interim event, before the actual, real one, because one and three are good numbers too."

"As in..."

"One year of being together physically and three years since our first sight of each other."

"That's next July!"

Peter understanding sent Mike from pleased to smug in one easy second. Then his head swivelled around, his attention caught. “Back in a sec…” he muttered, twisting away.

“Oh, not a damn gumball machine!” Funny, Mike didn’t have that many crazes, unlike Micky, say, but stared hard into these domes as if he could will what he wanted into dropping down the chute for him. “You don’t even chew gum,” Peter muttered, taking in the evening view of sand and sea instead. Mike tended to slip the gumballs into a pocket, making Micky sniff the air when Mike entered the pad, then stalk toward him and pat him down for the revolting candy Mike had probably forgotten about. It was one of a series of Mike-Micky things and—

“Peter!” yelled Mike. “ _Look!_ ” He bounded over, an opened plastic ball in his hand, and skidded on the wet wood, dropping what he carried and bending low to catch it before it hit the deck.

Peter peered in at the small metallic circle glinting in the transparent ball. “A _ring_?” Mike’s position, low down on the decking belatedly registered. “Is that…for me? You…you’re…” He couldn’t get the words out.

“What?” Mike looked horrified as he stood up. “ _You?_ No! This is the John Wayne adjustable Gumball Machine Ring! I’ve been looking for this since I was a kid! I’ve dreamed about this for years!” He took the trinket from its shell and stroked and caressed it. “Why would you think…”

Peter, arms folded, one foot tapping, let him work it out.

“Oh. _Ohhh._ Peter. Heck, babe…” Mike looked agonized for a long second before he straightened up. “Oh, what the hell. Yes. This is for you.” He took Peter’s hand and pushed and wriggled until John Wayne’s face, hat, bandana and all, winked up at him from a finger. “There. See how much I love ya?”

“It’s a little small,” Peter commented.

“Oh, I suppose it is at that.” Mike looked around. “Oh, I know something bigger you’ll like. Come on…”

To the rifle booth, Peter discovered, before he could correct what he’d meant by saying the ring was too small in size. He was surprised to see the kiosk still open, but not that Mike easily won token after token. Mike was a good shot, even on these air rifles that shot crooked, and he played it safe by aiming for the inner ring, mostly getting that or the magpie, surrounding it, which was one less point.

“Buddy…” The booth owner tapped his watch and made a pillow of his hands. “You gonna cash in those tokens for a prize on the stall or keep ’em for next time?”

“I don’t have enough for what I want…but I’m running out of coins,” Mike admitted.

“How many more do you need?” Peter was interested in how this was going to play out. “ _Fifteen?_ ” he repeated. Michael had twenty already. “Look, I’ve got a dime. If I get all three shots in the bullseye, five points each…” He let Michael and the kiosk guy do the math while he got the feel of the spring-powered air rifle. Seconds later, he had all three shots in the dead center of the bullseye, and the scowling guy was handing over plastic tokens with a reluctant hand.

“We should go a range sometime,” Peter suggested to Mike.

Mike gave a nod, but was too busy sweeping his tokens over to the stallholder and pointing high up on the back of the booth…to a big cuddly tiger, that he presented to Peter with a low bow that took him down on one knee.

“Oh. It’s beautiful! I love it!” Peter buried his face in its striped fur and sneezed. “Thank you.”

“Welcome, I’m sure,” snarled the rifle guy, shutting his kiosk with a clang.

Mike led Peter over to the pier’s wooden handrail, and relative privacy. “You like it, huh?” he asked, grinning.

“So much. And I think this is meant for you.” With difficulty, he got the gumball ring free of his hand and shoved the tiger under one arm to wobble the ring onto Mike’s finger, then looked deep into his eyes, to make sure he understood. He did, if the smile that took over his entire body was any indication.

Mike cleared his throat. “With this John Wayne ring and this stuffed prize tiger, we hereby plight our truth.”

“Troth,” Peter corrected.

“Truth’s better.”

“I suppose so. Yes, this is good…but you’d better buck your ideas up for whatever's happening in January _and_ the actual, real…thing, whenever that is,” Peter warned him. Although he could guess Mike meant July: that would be two years they'd been together in every way.

“So, we’re…” Mike couldn’t speak.

Peter hardly could either, as it sank in. “Promised,” he managed, clutching Mike’s hand, that he was still holding, hard. Mike squeezed back harder.

“I’m so glad,” Mike whispered.

“Me too.” Peter was glad he was carrying a big cuddly tiger—he used it to dab his eyes with. “Really glad. And I love you,” he added. Mike liked to hear him say it…as much as Peter liked hearing Mike say it, like now, in return.

“Oh my God! I thought it would be hard, but it was a piece of cake!” Mike whooped.

“Someone say cake?” came a voice from behind them.

“ _Arrrgg!_ ” came from both of them at this medium Monkee scare. “Don’t do that!” they both ordered Micky. “And no. There’s no cake,” Mike added.

“Are you sure? I thought I heard it mentioned earlier too. A _lot_ ,” Micky said.

“Well, ya didn’t.” Mike glared at him.

“I guess there’ll be some in January, Micky,” Peter said. _And at the ceremony next July_ , he added silently to Mike.

_With two best men_ , Mike replied.

_Or, a best man and a bridesmaid_. Peter couldn’t resist.

“Yeah, but which of ’em’ll be in the dress this time?” Mike inquired.

But before Peter, laughing hard, could hazard a guess, Mike pulled him into the empty once fortune-teller’s and more recently hypnotist’s booth and kissed if not the life out of him, then his love into him. “Mick, you better not be still there and most certainly better not be looking,” Mike demanded, his lips still on Peter’s.

“I’m not,” came after a pause, one filled with more kisses and ending in more chuckles.

And Peter had to confess he was curious as to what January would bring, never mind July…


End file.
